


Bow Like The Field

by Figure_of_Dismay



Category: Endeavour (TV)
Genre: AU backstory, Age Difference, Feelings Realization, Gay confessions, Infidelity, Injury Recovery, M/M, Mild Smut, Relationship Negotiation, Slight Morse/Bixby, Trauma Recovery, episode: s2e1 Ride, non-fraud Bixby, pre legalization but only in the first half, s2 AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-03
Updated: 2020-10-20
Packaged: 2021-02-22 23:50:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 27,820
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23002375
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Figure_of_Dismay/pseuds/Figure_of_Dismay
Summary: The shooting made some emotional truths clear to Fred, and to Morse, and now they've got to deal with them in the restrictive framework of their lives. Fred is wrestling with the specter of his own mortality, and the realization that his simply, happy home isn't as settled as he though. Meanwhile, Morse is struggling to regain traction in his life after his faith in the job was shaken, and coming face to face with the realization that his instincts as a compulsive investigator -- and his attachment to his married DCI -- might be at odds with the moral high ground.This is a Morse/Thursday story, please note the lack of the platonic-familial "&" in the tags and read advisedly. S3 & S4 AU, post Neverland."He saw that they were both made that way, greedy for it... Neither could see the specter of it somewhere in their world, along their personal horizon and then turn away from it. Could not walk on from it, even if that would be the wisest, or the kindest course..."
Relationships: Endeavour Morse/Fred Thursday
Comments: 12
Kudos: 36





	1. overture

**Author's Note:**

> I have ~36,000 words of this already written. I'm putting up the first small section here as a way to prod myself into more typing and more posting. I'm really proud of this fic and it's been languishing away in the void of my notebook for 6 months. Time to let it be seen ;)
> 
> Please do let me know what you think!

And it pains me to say, I was wrong.  
Love is not a symptom of time.  
Time is just a symptom of love  
...  
Hardly seen, hardly felt–  
Deep down where your fight is waiting,  
Down 'till the light in your eyes is fading:  
Joy of life.  
Where i know that you can yield, when it comes down to it;  
Bow like the field when the combs through it:  
Joy of life.

\-- _Time, as a Symptom of Love, Joanna Newsom, Divers_

*

He saw that they were both made that way, greedy for it. not like some men, for the physical, the immediate and impersonal gratification, but for love, for all kinds of it, and for classic love most of all. Neither could see the specter of it somewhere in their world, along their personal horizon and then turn away from it. Could not walk on from it, even if that would be the wisest, or the kindest course. If they saw love within the reach of their arms or within the sphere of their vision, they said, ‘There is love there, I need to go and live in it.’

With Morse it was easy to see that in his childhood and even in his fabled Oxford years of youth, he had been starved of it, and of affection. It was easy to understand why he might recklessly hunger for it. With Fred, though, that was harder to see. He recognized the need in himself, the compulsion to throw himself in deep even when it was selfish, or even though it was an act of clinging to mere remnants, but he had never known from where it had sprung in him. He had hardly led a life of deprivations, he knew that, and if he had ever found himself lonely in it, that had come from himself only, letting his work and his preoccupations holding him apart from the warm life he’d built. The nature of his work, the hours he kept, they might have led him away from home and family, but he’d chosen them again and again, it was not all forced on him out of duty. He didn’t necessarily like his job but he liked what he accomplished there, and he let it consume him. 

He knew also that, even if he admitted the roughness from the depths of his youth and the impossibly hard things to which he’d borne witness, that would not justify the helplessness he felt in the pull of these broad-dimensioned longings. When he reached for love, he fell entirely, and was fully submerged. So knowing, he had to remember, and restrain himself and not reach — yet when these rare moments of temptation, of decision, stood in front of him, he did not choose, and did not restrain himself. He knew what a good man should do and still he didn’t do it, reaching instead for what had reached out and taken hold of him. 

That the two of them were faced with each other in this longing was somehow both synchrony and disaster at once. There didn’t seem, he thought, to be any two people more prone to agonize over taking what they wanted and yet less able to resist. Fred didn’t like to think of himself as weak-willed, or unable to manage his life, but emotions weren’t obedient things, and obedience was wholly alien to Morse, wholecloth. It was going to be an ugly mess and neither of them, not even for a serious moment, were going to do anything to stop it. 

Deep down in the part of himself that was already reaching, the part that got put aside when he chose to embrace the mundanities of daily life when the war was finished with him, and again when he finished with London and all that mess finally unpicked it’s claws from his back — He’d been so glad to leave it all behind, and he still was, he wouldn’t go back to those days, those depths, for anything. Still, that part, that buried part that had loved, and grieved, and died, and then beyond even death had passed to sleep, that part remembered an intensity to life that had not quite gripped him since. The full monstrous hugeness of love, and the terror and fury that went with it, the dizzy sea-saw or longing and elation, release, parting, pathos, this will be, this cannot be, both convictions held at once and both judiciously ignored. 

None of those can live and sustain for long, nor had they a place in a long and contented marriage. And that was what he’d chosen for his life. After losing Peter, and then Louisa, his comforting, fainter shade, in less than the span of two War years — war years being made of a different substance, both gravely compressed, passing in a flash and at the same time slow as glass, eternal — the happy brilliance and complicated hope and joy he had found with Winnifred before the depths had found him and had their fun with him was all he wanted, all he could then see ever wanting again. It had been like washing up on a green shore, somewhere quiet, somewhere straightened but unafraid, it was like a fresh, rainwashed dawn and a heavy fastness to anchor him to the earth and to the present. 

Though men of his generation and upbringing didn't put such thoughts into those, or any words, Win became his best friend as well as his wife. He worked the job and even told her about it, sought her counsel. They had lived comfortably and quietly, and he had not lied to her, only withheld what could not, absolutely could not be told. It wasn’t that he didn’t, that he hadn’t loved her. He had not lived his life harbouring secret passions for men, or for even for women who were not his wife. His contentment had been, for years, unfeigned and absolute. 

But then he’d felt himself drawing away, for no reason he could name. Keeping things to himself that once he might have shared -- told himself that case was too grim to bring to their sitting room or their bed. Found himself realizing that he hadn’t heard Win chatter to him about her garden club, her bridge group, her watercolour classes for some time. They talked about the children, the dinner, the telly, even work sometimes, but sometimes when he looked at Win and she looked at him, it was so by-rote, so set, he could tell that they were both complacently half-struggling through the fuzzy obstructive screen of the too-familiar that was holding them apart as well as together. Somehow, with time, that screen had only grown more dense and impenetrable. And then into that quiet, that growing adriftness, and the feeling in Fred’s gut like memory, the memory of a craving though not a craving itself, had dropped a brilliant, stumbling, beautiful young man with a personality like a wrecking ball. Who looked at Thursday with an unflinching acuteness, like he knew Fred through to the core of him, and like he expected him to live up to what he saw. 

Morse persisted and persisted, whatever obstacle he faced, he ran at, over and over, no sense nor custom nor order from his superiors could stop him, and always with the best of intentions if not to the best effect. The need to know, solve the puzzle and make the right person pay, these were not bad reasons to fling himself as he did, headlong after the truth. Politics didn’t sway him, nor did danger to his life. Morse would never have endured a loss like Mickey Carter and allowed them to cover it up, or slunk away in shame and fear, but then again Morse had only himself to think of, not a wife and two kids against whom threats could be and were made. Those first months with Morse, he thought a lot about Carter. About how fiercely Morse seemed to admire Fred, admitting him into his confidence when it seemed that he felt so few were worth his time and insights, and how that shining trust in those wide blue eyes might dim if he knew that Fred could be convinced to let a thing go, was an ordinary copper, not so rough as some, maybe, but human and rough enough, certainly, to knock down the boyish worship that he saw.

He didn’t ask himself, at first, why he wasn’t eager to take himself down off that improbable pedestal where Morse had put him. Fred had no illusions about himself, his looks, the proportions of his intellect,not scanty by any means, but then again not prodigious. But he did know that he could inspire loyalty, and that he could connect to people, could see them how they were and find it in himself to understand it and talk to them there. It made him effective as the head of CID and as a detective. But he also knew it was easy for some rather lost sorts of young men to develop an awkward, blushing kind of hero worship for a superior or someone they looked up to, and not that often but a time or two he’d seen it aimed towards him. 

It was harmless enough, substanceless and fleeting, but such things could make life hard for a young policeman in a world of cheerful ribbing and not so light hearted hazing for the ones who were a little odd and noticeably vulnerable in that way. He knew how to deflate these awkward cases well enough, a combination of backing off and being one of the boys, making him one of the boys -- not so special after all, see, we’re all about the same, we’re all friends here. And as the lad in question felt more a part of things, and more confident, and saw that Fred himself was just another copper on the force, the young man didn’t need to look up to his old boss quite so avidly anymore.

He had done none of these things with Morse. If anything he’d pulled him further aside, kept him busy, out of general duties when he could -- it was a waste of his brains, he told himself, and it was, but it was also how he was supposed to get to know the rest of the team. He didn’t even notice what he’d been doing, at first -- and at first it had been necessary to give the lad any traction within the team with his ideas. Yet it carried on long past any forgivable circumstances, Thursday’s unchecked impulse to pull him aside, to work with him alone, keeping cases and theory between them most of the time. The need to stand between Morse and those who struggled to understand him instead of putting them together and telling them to work things out, the way he would and had done with others on his team in the past. 

Those days when Jakes was to drive him and bagman for him were unobjectionable on the whole, not really reason enough to feel the sense of letdown that he did when they came around. A sense of disappointment altogether disproportionate to the working friendship that he was willing to believe he was building. All of it with Morse, all so minor, so impossible to notice as it began, but none of it was quite like what he’d known with any other bagman. That had made sense, too, because Morse was not quite like any other copper, or any person he’d met. 

Then, much more difficult to ignore, Fred had found that those things which once he would have told Win, and in recent years found he’d held back, keeping his own council, he now told Morse. Not that Morse himself exactly invited confidences with reciprocal openness, but his eyes, his countenance, were open, curious, without judgement. He understood things, people, even though he didn’t seem to understand himself, and the things Fred meant not to say, to Morse or to anyone, seemed to spring forth from him at odd moments, in the quiet, important moments between them. Those moments which seemed to come up on them in the car, in the quiet corners around Oxford that felt like things apart from the usual rough mess of daily work. Sometimes, especially when it came on the heels of snapping and snarling, defensive wrangling when their very different languages for life failed to overlap, it was like some special clarity had settled in the air. In these moments he felt, with a toll of rightness, this is what we’re really like, he would think to himself, this is what it's really like to know somebody. Morse, inscrutable as he was, seemed to feel it too. He would ring with intensity, that wild, pent up honesty of being that he kept muffled away so much of the time. 

That’s what Fred had wanted to protect. Maybe not only that, but it was an amalgam of those moments which flashed across his mind’s eye when he asked himself, so why do I treat this one young man so differently to all the others I’ve trained up on the job. That was as much of an answer as he could take for a long time, and it was good enough. Rare, vivid, marked in his mind. Certainly that accord on it’s own was more meaningful than a hundred working alliances in any career, so he found he could let it go unexamined for a good long while.

And then he couldn’t. Morse very nearly died with him, for him -- which of these options was worse he wondered -- and he, Fred, was shot. While he lay drowning in his own pain, thinking that in all likelihood help wasn’t coming, he’d had the dual sense of worrying that his dear, lovely Endeavour was very soon to follow if he didn’t come to his senses and shoot back, and the horrible gladness that it was Morse with him, his Morse, who knew and saw him best -- he would understand, whatever happened. Except that he wouldn’t, would he. Fred knew that. In the parts of himself not overwhelmed with shock and gunshot trauma, he was gripped with a massive, soul-gripping grief to be leaving him behind, when Morse still so clearly needed him. And to make him witness it, that had been a mistake, that Morse, who still went white at the sight of blood, and grieved subtly even over the unknown dead. Fred had had the dream-clear sense of Endeavour’s distress while he lay on the cold, dank floor of Blenheim Vale, he heard his voice calling, begging, and struggled to connect with it. He’d had the idea, half delirious vision, half garbled memory, of Morse in tears, laying his head on Fred’s chest and begging, commanding to stay. He had been shocked at the idea, Morse had never touched him in such a way before and struck him with such a feeling of longing and tenderness that shot, like the bullet had, through the core of him and left him forever changed. 

He had wanted desperately to comfort him, fold his arms around him or at least, at last, put a comforting hand on his back, but his limbs seemed far away, inanimate, no longer under his control. He’d wanted to tell Endeavour how grateful he was, that he’d hoped he hadn’t been disappointed in the end, and -- but then knowing that he wasn’t going after all. He couldn’t, with his own Morse curled on his chest, desperate, insisting, leaden, holding him to the earth.

Whether it had really happened like that, he’d never been able to fully see. The doctors agreed that memory loss around the time of injury was normal, and nothing to worry about, but the vagueness around it, what he thought and what he hoped looking back was frustrating. He did know, because he had been told, that the cavalry had come eventually, and the ambulance. That Morse had moved or been moved away from him just as he was sinking completely under the dark. He knew that he’d woken up in hospital, in pain, and calling after Morse in a panic, what had become of him? And the implacable medical faces around him wouldn’t or couldn’t say, refused even to speak of it. 

He knew that while he’d been drugged asleep, sliced open and repaired, he’d had other dreams, further from reality and yet not -- which had made his heart leaden and wincing when he looked at Win sitting vigil by his bedside. Dreams which told him without equivocation that he’d been stolidly in denial about how things stood with Morse for some time, but now that wooly, half intentional, obliviousness was over.

*

Win held his hand and bossed about his nurses and tried to leave him a tiny measure of autonomy and privacy by not hovering when she could. She’d had a hard time with Sam’s birth, and been stuck in the maternity ward for an extra stretch of days, and while he’d been worrying and ineffectively crowding her, Win had been complaining about the indignity of it, the all-seen, all-prodded, ordered about and ignored life of a maternity patient. He knew she was trying to be considerate in the context of what she had viewed as a degrading ordeal when all she wanted to do was get home with her new baby and see the other little one. He was in more pain, though, and under enough morphine that the world seemed a soft and distant wash, or monstrously close but distorted, and he wasn’t overly worried about the dignity of it. Later he’d be grateful for the care that Win took not to baby him too much and that she ran interference with the kids, and later with some of the lads from the station who wanted to bring their well-wishing to him directly but who he was glad hadn’t seen him in that state. 

And still, no one would tell him what had become of Morse, save that he had not been injured, a strangely specific phrasing, he’d thought, even when he was too submerged to think why it bothered him. His presence, Fred had thought on some of his half sleepless nights, would have been welcome in any state, he wouldn’t mind, irrational as it might have been. And also, that, looking candidly at his own fixation, maybe it was better that he was staying away.

It was Bright who told him, at last. By then, five days after the shooting, he’d made it past a brief postoperative fever and the heaviest doses of whatever it was that made the world squashed and awful, and he was able to sit propped up in the surgical recovery ward bed, in his own pajamas and dressing gown and see visitors. He’d finally seen Sam and Joan for longer than a few careful minutes the day before, and he was beginning to feel human again. Sore, easily tired, and sometimes short of breath, and thoroughly trapped, but human and anxious for news from the outside world, so he’d leapt at the chance when Win said the Superintendent was there to see him. 

Bright told him how glad he was to see him doing so much better, recovering well, and that he knew he’d be back where he belonged before long. Then he’d given Fred a long, mute, pained look and said, “I don’t believe anyone has told you… I’m afraid that Morse has been arrested for Wintergreen’s murder. Angela McGerrett has already confessed to the crime, and getting him released ought to be a simple matter, but there has been… a great deal of resistance. Though your motives were the very best, the two of you have made some powerful and intractable enemies.” 

Win had gone off to get a cup of tea and left them alone to talk, for which he was grateful, because he vaguely suspected that his reaction might have told her more than he wished her to know. Though he also could have done without Chief Superintendent Bright seeing him stricken, red-faced and half shouting even though it made his chest sting, about the idiocy, the cruelty, the corruption of arresting Morse, of all people, who had only been there because Fred had stood on his honor and made an impulsive stand, and nearly gotten them both killed. He’d been naive to think even the narrative of their confrontation wouldn’t just be twisted and used against them by the very people they were trying to stop. How could he have been so ignorant as to think that a few bullets in the night, no matter how recklessly noble, would be enough to stop the whole quietly corrupt macchine in the light of day?

He’d railed at all of it, biting and bitter, though thankfully he wore himself out quickly, and wound down into regret and sick worry. And thankfully Bright, to his credit, had borne it surprisingly well, reacting with compassion and concern and his own frustrated concern for their wayward constable. 

“I just wish they’d let me out of there so I could go down there and shake some sense into them,” Fred said, subsiding, “We’ve got to get him out of there, sir. It’s beyond wrong, and worse, what it’s got to be doing to him. A lad like Morse…”

“I know, Thursday, believe me, I know. The whole thing reeks in the most uncomfortable way. It may actually be better for Morse to keep you out of it, the pair of you have angered some powerful people and they may be more tractable if they don’t see you as a united front. Better not to remind them of some of the… more difficult details of that night. A woman has confessed to the crime for which they’re trying to hold him, and when the forensics comes through and the charges come down they’ll have little choice. And as much as I hate to put it this way, your injury is a mark in favour of the credibility of our version of events over theirs. Not even they can possibly accuse you of inventing a critical injury, which, I’m sure, will also help to force their hand. You mustn’t distress yourself, we’ll get him back before long.”

“Yes, sir, I’m sure you’re right,” he’d said, not truly or entirely reassured but glad at least to be hearing the real situation at last, “And thank you, sir. You’ve stood by us both. And I’m sure this mess isn’t easy to untangle. I’m sure Morse will be grateful, too, once he learns how you’ve believed in him.”

“Yes, well. Quite,” he’d said, pleased and confident in his fastidious way, and made his awkwardly over formal goodbyes before the ward sister could come in and tell him off for disturbing the patient. 

Fred was deeply disturbed by the news but as he drifted off that night he was more concerned with what the hell he and Morse were going to be able to say to each other about what they’d been through. Around the awkwardness of intense emotions and near death, and his newfound unnameable fixation. So confident was he that it would soon be all mended at Bright’s direction, and he and Morse would be reunited in a day or two. 

It took another week and a half to get Morse cleared and sprung. Jim Strange picked him up on his release, having delivered the news, and dropped him back at the attic flat to get some rest. When reporting back, in the hospital garden where they’d made their way so that he and Strange could talk with the illusion of privacy, Strange said that Morse looked exhausted but not injured in any way that he could see. He’d barely spoken but claimed he was fine. He’d said nothing about the likelihood of the inquest being sealed “for the privacy of the victims” but he hadn’t seemed happy about it, and even less happy about the idea of his leave carrying on for an indeterminate length of time until it was done. Strange said that Cowley was very quiet and empty with them both gone and Jakes was getting a bit too comfortable, so he hoped it wouldn’t all drag on for too long.

“You’re looking much better, sir. I’m sure before too long now, they’ll spring you too,” Strange had said with an affable smile and good humour that was, somehow, as yet undaunted. 

It was another five days before he was released home for the last leg of his recuperation. By that time Morse had broken it off with the young nurse he’d been seeing, had packed up most of his belongings and abandoned his flat, and vanished from all the spheres of his life known by those closest to him, telling no one where he’d gone or quite why. When Fred learned of this, he dragged himself out of the house -- while Win was out doing the shipping so she wouldn’t insist on his staying, or on her going along to look after him, as now that he was home she’d been far less successful at not hovering. He took the car, first time behind the wheel since he’d been shot, and he could feel the slight pull of his new scar as he lifted his arms to steer. He forced himself up all those stairs to Morse’s dingy attic flat, dogged climbing, all the time fearing what he would and would not find. The spare key was still tucked up on top of the door lintel trim, forgotten and foolish but in the end guarding very little, Fred found.

The place truly was largely cleared out, and Morse hadn’t left a note, or map, or any sign to find. Fred decided that was good. If he was going, really going, back up north, or abroad, or that further distance about which Frec could not bear to think, he was the sort to say something. The kind to leave an explanatory word, a full missive in peace and parting for those few he had taken into his confidence, so that they could know and try to see. A man of words, Morse was, and of partings, and earnest confessions after the fact, these were facts of his very make up. If he had honestly meant to leave them all, leave him behind for good, he would have said something, sent a letter, made a phone call. This emptiness and silence, therefore was not a silence and a parting at all, but a ringing plea to be followed, and found. And maybe even, Fred hoped, brought back home. 

Morse had taken his records, and his player, and his books. That gave him pause, unsettled his conviction slightly, or maybe just warned how intractable he might find Morse if -- when he tracked him down. It reassured him, too, though, that Morse still clung to his most prized possessions. He hadn’t had that luminous love of greater things shaken out of him. If he had them, then wherever he was, he was alright. Or still himself at least, if rightness didn’t come into it.


	2. reunion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fred's recovery, and all that this entails.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Um. Sorry for the wait? I'm working on getting more of this typed up, edited, and fleshed out, so... that's progress, right? And here's hoping more my efforts are steadier because I'm not willing to let his sit for another 5 or 6 months ;)

**

As he’d lain in bed in the semi-private hospital ward, in the long, much disturbed nights after Win had gone home, he’d been able to admit to himself that his breath still did burn in his lungs and he thought of the choices he’d made to lead to this point. He considered that, all told, his life was happy and good and full, not something a sane man would risk. Not risk with a certainty of gun fire, and not risk with a foolish, magnetic, fantastic notion born of blood loss and fear. He considered, also, that his head was not yet clear; he was still drug addled, drifting, and he could get no sense out of anyone about what had happened to Morse, or why he hadn’t appeared. Certainly, as soon as the absent awkward bugger showed his face, he’d just be his ordinary mulish everyday self and dispel all of this soft nonsense stewing in his head. When the real world intruded once more, it would all come to rights.

But this certainty didn’t stop him from indulging in recollections of those dreams. Not the specifics, those faded and broke apart as he woke and slept and was rolled under by the drugs in his drip, but the soft sense of them, the emotional truth of them. Funny how that could work, the misted strangeness that the dream mind constructed could be completely meaningless, and also contrarily, be peerlessly honest. That was the part that was harder to dismiss, because as ridiculous as it seemed, it didn’t feel unfamiliar. It didn’t feel wrong. It frightened him, how much it didn't feel false or new. Embarrassing, yes, inconvenient, but not new. 

Win noticed that he was distracted. She knew what it looked like when he was sunk in his own mind, chewing on his worries. “What is it, Fred?” she’d asked, every day, it seemed. “You did what you thought you had to, to stop them. I’ve always known about you and about your job, what it could mean you’d have to do, or go through. Doesn’t mean I don’t wish it was otherwise, but I don’t blame you, Fred. I know you did right. Not your fault what’s happened to Morse, either.”

She soothed him with her patient words and her patient hands. Sometimes it was the only solid thing he could cling to. Sometimes it made him sick and furious with guilt for what he couldn’t stop thinking about, wondering about. He was grateful, though, so grateful for Win's steady presence. She was the only sane thing about that early time in hospital. And when she reminded herself not to hover and smother, well. Sometimes he tried to insist she stay, that she wasn’t wearing him out, and other times he was relieved. He wasn’t a good patient. As soon as he was awake and aware for noticeable blocks of time, he chafed at the feeling of dependence and confinement. He knew he needed Win’s patience because he would end up testing it to the limits. And he knew he needed to stop thinking about what he might or might not feel for his bagman while depending on his wife and her love and forbearance. 

Once they knew what had become of Morse, Fred had that all-encompassing distraction, and very understandable reasons to be preoccupied. It also, in a way, was a relief. Morse hadn’t shown up to petition a visit with him because he couldn’t. He was being unlawfully detained. It made him furious and terribly, gnawingly worried, but it was also a bullet proof reason not to have shown his face. Not a resentment born of what Fred had dragged him into, not a sense of shame over what emotional outpouring may or might not have happened as they waited for help to arrive and their nerve was tested. He still didn’t know if the scene he recalled had actually happened, but he could guess that a private, proud, aloof man like morse would be embarrassed by such an excess of feeling and expression, no matter the circumstances and Fred had been stumped by how he could convey to the lad that if was alright or forgotten if need be, if he wouldn’t get near enough to be told. Well, so that hadn’t been the problem at all, and Fred wasn’t even able to stand up and fight in his corner.

“I’m sure he knows you would be doing everything possible, if you could,” Win reassured him. “The best thing you can do to help him -- and all of us, Fred -- is to do as the doctors say and not push yourself before you’re ready. What good would it be to any investigation if you give yourself a setback and get stuck in hospital for unnecessary days or weeks?”

She’d used her reasoning voice on him, like she used to on the kids when they were younger and needed convincing into reasonable agreements. He’d wanted to be stung that she was treating him like a recalcitrant adolescent, but then again even he could tell that he wasn’t at his most rational at that point.

“Yes, Win, I’m sure you’re right. You’ve always been more rational than me, haven’t you. I’m very sorry for worrying you so much,” he’d said. “I’ll do my best not to get ahead of myself.”

“Don’t apologize, you don’t have anything to be sorry for. I do understand. I just don’t want to see you making things even harder on yourself.”

So he’d tried to take these thoughts to heart, that he wasn’t the only one who would suffer if he did something rash out of sheer bloodymindedness. The truth was that though his mind had recovered quickly enough, the little walks they made him take up and down the halls, for the benefit of his circulation, were enough to wreck him for great swathes of time, showing him just how far he still had to go. He had been injured before, in the war, but none of those incidents had been anything like the grievousness of a bullet through his rib and lung or the surgery required to repair it. He was kept half elevated in his bed so that his lungs wouldn’t fill, but as a man accustomed to sleeping on his side, in the same bed for the last 9 years, this made his nights long and restless, snatches of sleep and half waking dreams. He had a double room, but thankfully the other bed was empty and he had relative privacy, save for the constant coming and going of the ward sisters, but even so he was set adrift in the strange country of sleeplessness. He felt time crawl and feared he was losing his mind in the long December nights. 

The days were better. After the first days lost forever in his memory to the mire of early recovery, Win allowed the kids in to visit him -- preserving his dignity until he was coherent enough to speak with them. Sam came after school in the middle of the afternoons. He brought awkward talk about his school friends and familiar complaints about his homework. He was in his final year before university or adult life and he was chafing at the strictures of it now that the end was in sight, essays and revising, a hated English teacher who was impossible to please, the clamor of the other boys as they planned for the future and argued amongst themselves, the concerns of a 17 year old boy -- well aside from the concern he likely didn’t want to talk about with his father, though he was sure that Sam did have someone to walk out with on Saturdays. Sam approached him with upbeat casualness. Fred couldn’t tell how much was a bluff for his sake and how much was the genuine, well shored up equanimity his son seemed to have which meant the sharper impacts of life were firmly deflected. He was proud of Sam's ability to take the rough with the smooth, though sometimes he wondered if round, easygoing denial was going to land him in situations he didn’t intend to be in through sheer affability. He was a sensible lad though, responsible. He’d never gotten himself in real trouble in school. He was glad that Sam wasn’t taking his injury with more angst and upset than any of the other obstacles in his short life, which he’d acknowledged with only cheerful determination. Fred thought this undented, cheerful stubbornness was better, at his age, than to let it unsettle him right at this precarious beginning of his larger, adult life. He’d decided to be reassured about Sam’s state of mind.

Joan was more difficult to read, and his visits with her were more brief, in the evenings, with her job at the bank taking up more of her time. Joan had always been the more sensitive of his children, the more sensible of the realities of life. She clearly understood that he had been gravely injured, and had been in real trouble, and she wasn’t apparently sure how to make peace with that yet. He knew that once he was more recovered, she would calm and settle back to her ordinary, steady self. Win told him privately that she’d been badly rattled in those first days afterwards and then had grimly braced herself for what might happen, the anticipation of dread clear in her eyes, but after she had seen that he was alright and slowly recovering, she’d started to come back to life. He’d been grateful that Win had kept the kids at bay while he’d been the most helpless and least able to reassure them. He wished that he could have kept them from ever having to realize the possible consequences of coppering. They’d been young and kept in the dark after Mickey Carter, after all, and had been given their Oxford life as ample recompense for any anxieties at the time.

The doctor always made his rounds in the morning, early, when he was groggy with restless nights and the persistent fog of the pain medication. Often, the doctor’s rounds happened before Win had arrived for her morning visit, still involved at home most likely, with Joan and Sam’s breakfast to make, and Sam’s sandwiches for school -- all the little pieces of morning routine he wasn’t currently witnessing but knew were continuing as ever. It was on one of these mornings in the second week that the doctor stopped to talk with him rather than merely pausing and hovering in his magisterial way. The doctor had an ex-ray film in a large envelope along with his usual clipboard. He’d pulled it out and showed it to Fred, in the sharp winter sunlight, and showed him the shadowy, chthonic imprint of his own lungs on the film, and pointed out the small white spot, like a shard of solid light in the haze of tissue, and told him that this shard might kill him. This was the piece of bullet, he said, that had broken on his rib and now this one last piece, ever so small and sharp, was lodged in lung muscle by the heart. By your heart, the doctor said, and quite tricky to remove.

For the moment it was stationary, quiescent, likely being encased in scar tissue, but it might -- with exertion or without -- become dislodged. And if it became dislodged, it might travel harmlessly, perhaps to a place from which they could retrieve it. Or it might, the doctor warned, his affable, young face both kindly and neutral, sorry for him but too distant from his plight to feel it for himself, the way many young doctors and coppers learned on the job, or it might move into his bloodstream and go to his heart. The way an embolism would, the doctor said, a blood clot, which are very dangerous for the heart and the brain.

“I’m a CID man, doctor,” Fred had said, having to first clear his throat around the creeping chill that gripped it, “I’ve investigated enough suspicious deaths in my time, and natural ones, to know what an embolism is.”

“Yes, I see,” said the young doctor, “I’m very sorry then, to bring you this news. Is your wife here this morning, sir? Perhaps you’d like me to get her? Bring her in from the hall? Or a nurse perhaps, if you’d like a glass of water?”

“She’s, uh. She’s not in yet this morning. I’m sure she’ll be along shortly. If you don’t mind, doctor, I’d just like a few minutes to myself. And-- if we might keep this to ourselves? Just now, you understand,” Fred had said. He’d straighted against his bracing pillows and given the young doctor his most measured and direct look, exercising the force of will that even so laid low he was readily able to impose.

The doctor had agreed graciously and exited the semi private ward with the unhesitating ease of a surgeon leaving the patient’s problems to their own care and Fred had been left to try to make sense of what he had just learned. 

The doctors did like to ambush you when you were at your most tired, he thought, most dispirited and vulnerable in the mornings after the nights when you had not slept save for snatches. Fred had lain intentionally still against the raised mattress, guarding against the pain of his new, not-yet scar and gripped by the fading dregs of fever, and traveled freely down the usually shuttered corridor of his own life. He had looked not forward, into the as yet blank future but back to the time when he had been surrounded with life and death, with his own life and his own death, and the exchange of gunfire, the desert heat, the camp boredom, the tight knit comradery of his men, the long marches. He’d been a young man, strong and fit and sturdy, with no persistent ache in his knees, no new, persistent catch in his breath, not without awareness of the fragility of his self and the engine of his body, but without the sense that this human engine was susceptible to more than the swift killing blow of fate or the freedom of escape. That young man didn’t picture himself in half measures. He could never have foreseen this convalescent limbo, the idea that even as his body healed he might still be dying.

That man also loved in absolutes, was loyal and disloyal in absolutes. He had known his lost friend -- more than friend, and a name that he had been driven to strike from his own heart so it wouldn’t continue to drag at him -- Peter with furious devotion, the way only young men can, when they know they live on the edge of destruction. He had enlisted at twenty-five and met Peter Groves when he was finished with training and was deployed to the desert. When they first met, they’d been a pair of green corporals with no idea of what was truly ahead of them. They had both advanced quickly by dint of surviving in the face of grueling orders and bungled strategy -- whispered conversations in the middle of the night, sneaking hoarded cigarettes and wondering what they were doing out there, why they weren’t gaining any ground, the terror and thrill of sharing forbidden doubts in knowing glances and half swallowed words.

As time went on, he and Peter had found more kind of phrases to share on those long, sleepless, desert nights, under a wide and brilliant sky spangled with more stars than he had ever seen in London. Carefully at first, nervous and doubting, and in shock at himself at what he found he wanted. Fearful but helpless fixation with Peter’s beautiful face, his clever eyes, his wicked smiles and filthy humour, the way he leaned close, so casually but so full of intent. The knowing way he’d set up a campaign against Fred’s hesitations and reservations, enticing and gentling him under his power, while also serving as his loyal second in command. Fred had loved him as best, dearest friend for a year, and then furtively, with outrageous passion, with fumbling hands and stolen moments, with sweetness found buried under sweat and fear and dust, for a further year that was as eternal as it was brief. It had been that sinking year of losing ground to the Germans hand over fist, yet gaining, conquering, discovering parts of himself he had never anticipated.

Had he sensed those capacities in himself in his youth? Fred had never been sure. His childhood had been too much of a jumble, middle child and not much doted on, in the cheek by jowl chaos of working class London after the Great War. Caught between George’s friends and Charlie’s, never quite fitting in with either but also not attracting many of his own. He knew he’d never had anyone like Peter in his life, before or since, who was so vibrant, so present, and possessed of secret keys or an impossible ability to reach and see and draw out all the well guarded inner parts of his being, made him feel like they were parts worth knowing and keeping. Peter had made him feel perceived, trusted, looked after and loved. 

And then Peter had died, just as the tides began to turn. Quick and absolute, he had been at Fred’s side one moment, competent and determined, and destroyed the next. Gone, with no farewells. Fred was injured then, too, but not enough to take him from the horror of the loss, or keep him from running for his life when it was necessary. He knew even at the moment that he would live, survive at least, though it wasn’t until he’d been rounded up and shipped to the nearest army hospital to be cleaned and stitched and dressed and given a few nights recovery in a narrow, sagging, ward bed that he had chance to think about how living meant moving steadily away and away from Peter and all he had been. 

Now here was another hospital bed, and a wholly different, more difficult young man on his mind. And this time, there was the realization that his life might just rise up and vanish away and away from him, for all he thought at first that he’d endured and triumphed after the shootout. 

The ruddy, businesslike ward sister came around before long, bringing him a grey-pink plastic tray with thin porridge, a green tinged banana, a weak cup of tea in a heavy, grey-white ceramic mug. She helped him raise the head of the bed and sit fully up against the pillows with brisk, impersonal cheer, gave a satisfied, distant smile at his thanks, and moved on. Fred realized he’d been dozing, unmoored in the past, and came back to reality with a heavy sigh and a cold wash of dread and relief. 

Win would be there soon, he knew. Win knew about Louisa, that he had felt compelled, or freed to confess, broadly and with regret. She did not know about Peter, not what he’d really meant to him. But Peter, he had never be able to speak about, even though most of what they had been was brothers in arms, and most of what had passed between them, enforced by the dangers and lack of privacy, had been words, and looks, and trust. This one ghost, or memory he had protected within him, growing more diffuse over the years. 

There had been others, sometimes, to catch his eye, of course there had been. But none that he’d been close to. None that had seemed to know him too, or caught on the same line of magnetism. Fred had been glad of this, proud, of wholly and happily he’d settled into his marriage. He and Win had begun so gently, so distantly, friends through his scoundrel of a younger brother who courted over the post, on snatches of leave, married on a three day pass. It was a steadily growing love, and he’d been lucky, they both had been, to find that they still both loved and liked each other when he finally came home. 

Peter, Louisa, they had both happened to him before the real heart of his marriage had really begun, and both -- he’d thought -- had been killed before he’d had to make any solemn choices. He’d thought that those muscles of obsession, of longing and curiosity, atrophied and gone. He was still dizzy with the realization that he’d been wrong, that his heart had never aged or dimmed. But now, it seemed, his entire assumed future might be wiped away, and Fred found that this clarified his mind, narrowing his vision of what mattered to a few distinct, shining points -- what he wanted to reach out for and keep.

**

Morse’s attic flat was cramped and cheerless and made even more so by the absence of those possessions from which Morse couldn’t bear to be parted. After it stopped reassuring him that Morse hadn’t drifted so far that those things no longer mattered to him, all he could feel was the dim, impersonal emptiness of the place. How could a man with such a brilliant, hungry, colourful mind find a way to subdue himself into a place like this, he wondered. But it was clean, at least, tidy and scrubbed. Maybe because Morse was slowly moving all his things out to wherever he was going, or had fled. 

That’s what Monica Hicks had said when he’d cornered her into talking -- or perhaps begged her, he had the sense to realize it could have seemed that way to her, he knew he’d been pale and haggard and clearly in worry when they’d spoken. He’d felt the exertion of it, the effort of being calm and purposeful, of striding about Oxford before the doctor recommended, putting on the solemn but unaffected detective’s face while underneath that his real fear for Morse’s well being -- physically or in his mind, he wasn’t sure and didn’t like to interrogate -- sounded gravely within, as surely as the daily bells in the heart of the city. She’d seen through him, he was sure. She was a nurse after all, and a clear sighted woman from what he’d seen. Miss Hicks had looked at him with knowing assessment and concern and then told him what she knew, with a note of apology in her voice that pricked and rankled. She’d been leaving for her shift though, so she hadn’t followed him back up, to oversee his search of the flat. She’d trusted him with the location of Morse's spare key -- over the door lintel you foolhardy lad, what are you thinking -- and he’d a mind to keep it for himself. But he also knew that when the month ran out the flat would no longer belong to Morse. He’d already given his last rent and given notice before Fred had been released from the hospital, and afterwards even this small link would be useless to him. 

The draining board was bare, as were the cupboards. The only recognizable feature that spoke to the man who’d lived there were a few stacks of books on the cheap bookcases that still stood along an inner wall. Even the mattress on the bedstead was bare save for a plain blue blanket wadded at the foot, forgotten or intentionally left behind for its faded appearance and unforgiving rough wool. He really meant to put this flat behind him and as far as Fred could tell he hadn’t put down roots anywhere else in Oxford. There were no clues in this dreary place about what Morse intended to do, beyond the broad and inarguable fact that he intended to do it elsewhere.

The unaccustomed exertion of the morning was catching up with Fred. He hadn’t gotten fully dressed and driven himself somewhere since the shooting and the flights of unforgiving stairs hadn’t helped anything. He could feel cooling sweat sticking his undershirt to his skin, and his lungs felt startled and strained. This had been a phenomenally stupid idea and still he had to get himself back home and then find a way to explain himself to Win. 

He felt himself strangled with a wave of something like frustration and wishfulness which he knew to be grief, or reaction, sensation of the reality of a man being denied the thing for which he longs, had promised himself through an endless, grueling time. Fred found himself slowly sinking down on the bed, the nearest place to sit by where he had stood and turned and fruitlessly studied, first perching on the edge of the mattress and then slowly reclining in order to spread his shoulders and give his lungs more room to work. Something he’d learned to do in his hospital bed when the complications had eased but lingered, making him over-aware of the movement of breath in his body. 

It wasn’t just a longing for Morse, he wasn’t so obsessed that he couldn’t see that. The longing was also for the time before, when their little world had seemed so secure, not harmless by any means but fulfilling and stable and full of comforting routine. Secure in the knowledge that things would continue on, could continue in just that way for a not-infinite but near enough in the career of a copper, a long, satisfying horizon ahead, that was now vanished, smashed and barred, not just his career, but all of it, his entire self. 

He hadn't told Win yet. Perhaps he wouldn’t, he hadn't yet decided if he would -- and if he procrastinated long enough, there was a fair, terrifying chance that he would never have to tell her at all. That would be cruel in its own way, but he wasn’t sure which would be worse, the worry and the fear of his family over something that may or may not ever happen or his sudden, shocking loss. Not that he wanted to believe it was a certainty, an inevitability, the doctors had warned and warned him that nothing was for sure -- and maybe that’s why he didn’t want to say anything to her. He didn’t want to put the words, concrete and irrevocable, out in the world. 

He couldn’t say it, no matter how badly some part of him wanted to, to expiate the fear, to say it and be comforted and reassured that it would not be so, because to say it would be to make it a real future, or unfuture, that might come to pass. 

Would he tell Morse, if he was there to hear it confessed? Fred didn’t know, but could picture it more closely than any other scenario where these words might pass his lips. Morse, for all his angles and corners, was someone you could tell things. Someone who listened. And absorbed what you said, what he, Fred specifically, said, like it mattered to his whole world and understanding of the way of things. He wanted to tell Morse. Fred could imagine it, one of their strangely intense talks in the car, and Morse affixing him with the full power of his solemn attention and steadying him in it, the way he had at Blenheim Vale that last, sane-insane night. Morse would be able to say something, he thought with a poignant sting, something that would put this mess, maybe his life wholecloth, into a fresh, tangible perspective. He would make sense of things, the way he always did, in the end. 

But there was the other side of it, too. If he told Morse, he would have to deal with Morse knowing. Looking at him with that stricken, wide eyed, speculating frown of his. Watching him morbidly for signs. That maybe-dream of Morse’s panicked voice, his maybe-tears as Fred lay bleeding and nearly dying -- he’d chosen to stand at Fred’s side and die with him if called to, rather than let him face it alone and live to tell the tale -- that spoke to something he wouldn’t name but that made him worry about how the young man would deal with the knowledge of a mortally dangerous piece of shrapnel. 

Fred knew that if nothing else, he was Morse’s main anchor point to the world outside of his records and literary thoughts and savored references. He hated to think of what might happen to Morse without anyone there to consistently look out for him, to see that he didn’t wander off into some distant ether of his own making. Even so, tempered by all this, Fred wanted to tell him. He wanted someone to know, even if there was no reassurance to be had, so that at least he might have some company as he looked out into the dark. And if there was one person to whom he could confess anything, it was Morse. There had never been anyone in Fred’s life quite like him. 

Not that he was in Fred's life now. Somehow in the space of a month he’d vanished as if he hadn’t been settled into every aspect of Fred’s life -- or nearly. All that was left were these few old books and this vacant flat and the worried faces of the people who had hoped to call him friend. 

He looked up at the sloped ceiling of the attic roof and tried to understand how this grim place could have fostered so many of Morse’s ephanies. The worst of it was that from what he’d glimpsed of his boarding house rooms and bedsits of the past two years, this was one of the most spacious and permanent. Fred certainly knew about making do with what he had but Morse was still living like an underfunded and untrusting student, ready to pack up and change his circumstances at a moment’s notice. And then he had, with good reason maybe, but with such wordless finality. It was a decisive move and for the first time, Fred wondered if he should simply respect Morse’s expressed wish, as indicated by his absence and by what Monica Hicks had told him, that he wanted to make a clean break, to move on. Leave the force and Fred, incidentally or not, behind. The shooting, the arrest, the corruption and the cover up, they would wear on even the heartiest souls, and Morse was… Morse. Sensitive, highly strung, a man who took all things personally, especially his failures, perceived or otherwise. He could obsess until he drove himself mad, maybe leaving was the only way Morse could keep from tearing himself to pieces over what had happened, and what they’d failed to dismantle, and Fred didn’t want to drag him back in if it was just the same as dragging him down.

But to not see him again… to possibly never see him again before-- Fred rubbed briskly at his slowly chilling cheek and forehead with a clammy hand, and then kneaded at the place where the scar was healing tautly, finger rumpling his neatly pressed shirt. No, he thought, that wasn’t a reality he would accept, and what’s more he didn’t think Morse would really want to be left alone to stew in his guilt and fear forever either. He might even have left, in this conspicuous and entire way, to see if those close to him might seek him out, to reassure him that he was not blamed, not unwanted. Fred could almost believe it with the memory of the hunger that lurked in him when he looked from the outside at the camaraderie around him. Morse might be angry at first, but he’d come around, if Fred was patient and insistent, and gave him to talk, he would. He had to.

At home, Win was waiting for him. She was cooking their tea in the kitchen, and when she heard the front door open, she came out to meet him, calling his name. She appeared, wiping her hands on the tea towel she clutched, a pinched frown on her face that meant that she was torn between worry and real annoyance with him.

“Where have you been? I left you safely tucked up and when I got back with the shopping, the house was empty. You didn’t even leave a note!”

“I, ah, I’m sorry. I should have told you… I didn’t want to worry you.”

“Well that didn’t go well, did it? I’ve been trying to decide if you were just out stretching your legs, or if you were some kind of trouble again.”

“No, no trouble. I went to see Morse, to see how he was. I haven’t seen him since… all this. I didn’t think I’d be so long.”

“Oh, Fred. You and that lad…” She shook her head with an expression he couldn’t parse. For a frozen second, he feared that she knew exactly what he’d been thinking about these last weeks, and then remembered that she couldn’t, that he hadn’t said anything, that he’d barely let himself think about Morse in her presence. And didn’t that say terrible things about his intentions in all this, he thought. 

“Did you see him, at least? Is he alright?” asked Win, peering up at him. “It’s not as though I haven’t worried about him, too, you know.”

He shook his head and then avoided her gaze, not sure what she would see in him. “He’d moved out, didn’t even tell his girl exactly where he was going. Not that she is his girlfriend anymore, after that.”

“Oh, Fred,” she said again. “I’m sorry. I worry about him too. But it wouldn’t kill you to worry about yourself, too.”

“I have to get back on my feet sometime,” he said, deciding that wandering down the path of how much he was worrying over himself would raise concerns he wanted to avoid. But he’s overworked himself on that one simple, harrowing errand and maybe Win was right after all. It was no good spending all of his energy on a search for a man who resolutely did not want to be found, and even if he was, who Fred could not speak to honestly without endangering the home he valued and maybe even his own sanity. He needed to rest. He needed to come to his senses and let all of this fevered, pointless thinking go and make the most of the life he had in front of him, for as long as he had it.

“Maybe you’re right,” he told Win. He let her shuffle him over to the lounge so he could sink into his armchair. “I’m sorry for worrying you,” he said again. He meant it most abjectly, meaning also ‘I’m sorry for worrying myself about you, and all about all of us.’ Apologizing for what she had no idea he’d ever risked, and would now absolutely stop.

Win smiled down at him, but he could see the pangs of worry still on her face. She came nearer and laid a cool, dry hand on his brow, to sooth and to check that he hadn’t managed to take a chill in the afternoon he’d been away. Win had so heroically refrained from hovering when he was in the hospital, but now that he was home and under her sole care, she could no longer restrain herself. Well, he didn’t begrudge it. He’d scared them all, and himself, and his grand gesture hadn’t paid out like he’d hoped. 

“Wore myself out,” he admitted with a sigh. Win patted his shoulder and withdrew. 

“I’ll get the kettle on for you, hmm?” she said with renewed patience. “You ought to get a little rest before the kids get back home. You know Joan still goes all skittish every time you cough. The look of you now isn’t exactly reassuring. You sure you’re alright?”

“Oh, yes. Be right as rain in no time. More time on my feet than I’ve had in a while, is all.”

Fred watched her decide that after all, he was alright, that it was just the slow climb to getting back to his old self taking its necessary toll. She nodded and retreated to the kitchen, and the dinner that she still had to make, tea towel no longer anxiously wrung but clutched purposefully in one hand. Oh, Win, he thought, oh dear, sweet, patient, Winifred. Of course he had to be done with this madness. Of course he was finished with it.

**

Fred’s resolve lasted ten days. He’d slowly worked himself up to taking healthful walks around the neighborhood, and to taking the car to do the shopping himself once or twice, to prove to himself that he was mobile, hearty and quick. He had tea with Superintendent Bright for the dual purpose of being checked up on and hearing about what was being quietly discussed about the Blenheim Vale internal investigation. It was a surprisingly pleasant afternoon. The next day he had a doctor’s appointment to assess how he was doing in his at-home recovery. It was after that, in the aftermath of being told that his recovery from the surgery was well progressed and nearly complete but that his prognosis with the shrapnel remained unchanged, still an armed bomb that might or might not go off at any time -- Fred asked about the possibility of a second procedure and the man talked vaguely and dissuasively about risks -- that he broke. His resolve snapped with a wild, selfish wish.

Fred went back to the apartment house that afternoon and waited around for Monica hicks like a disreputable PI, and she took pity on him once again with a phone number Morse had given her, to be used in only the most dire emergency, he hoarded the number until he could leave it with Jim Strange to be traced. He didn’t know what Strange read on him when he asked, when they met for a quick drink over lunch, but he agreed readily, and with a note of concern that made him want to squirm. 

Two days later, Fred had told Win that he thought he had a solid lead on Morse -- he refused to lie about where he was going -- for he had not yet admitted to himself what he was on his way to do, to ask -- and she had frowned at him but told him she understood. Told him that the sooner he reassured himself, the sooner he could start putting the whole ordeal behind him and move on with a clear heart and conscience. He tried to decide that reassurance was all that he wanted, that conscience wasn’t impinging on him. He thanked his wife for understanding, and left her making up the Monday shopping list at the kitchen table. 

An hour's drive into the woodland, and an awkward conversation with a member of the landed gentry later, he was pulling up before a small, shabby cottage in the woods, near drowned in underbrush. He knew it was the right place because as he left the car and approached the door, he heard the strains of some kind string quartet, concerto, something eloquent, textural, piteous, played on a portable record player somewhere farther down by the lake’s edge. He was lost briefly in a choking combination of familiarity, annoyance and obliterating relief. Morse was here, just around the corner, and still apparently himself, no matter how shaken.

As Morse wasn’t within the cabin, Fred couldn’t knock politely and warn him of his approach. Instead he took the footpath around the cabin, feeling like a thief sneaking up. Morse was curled awkwardly in a worn looking canvas and frame chair, book propped on his knee, absorbed. Beside him was a spindly cane end table obviously dragged out to hold up the record player, which broadcast doggedly against the noise of the late spring breeze and woodland chirpings. He could see the back of Morse’s head as he drew nearer, frazzled mass of ruddy brown curls in even more disarray than after one of his fretful all-nighters. The palely elegant shape of his wrist where he held up the book, curving above the arm of the chair. Fred paused at the corner of the house, indecisive, greedy for the undisturbed sight of him. The leaves of the trees along the water’s edge shook with a breath of air and scattered sunlight across him with enchanted grace. Fred watched avidly, with hot cheeked reverence.

Better to call out than be discovered inexplicably standing and watching, he thought, and did so. “Hello, Morse,” he said and could think of nothing to add to that. He would have apologized for intruding, maybe, only he wasn’t sorry at all.

Mose startled violently and rose, dumping his book to the long, rough grass in his hast, and turned around to face him. “Sir,” he said, exclaimed, shocked but maybe not displeased, “What are you doing here?”

“I, ah, bothered Monica Hicks for your number. Did a little digging. I know you’ve been avoiding us all, Morse, but I’ve… wanted to see how you were getting on. After it all wrapped up, you know.”

“Is it? All wrapped up now?” he asked haltingly.

“Seems to be, or all but, according to Bright. He’s been keeping me in the loop.”

“Oh,” said Morse faintly. His face was inscrutably pensive. “And you’re alright, sir?”

“Oh, yes. Well on the mend,” Fred said blandly, and he didn’t believe it was a lie, he was nearing normalcy, and the other either was or wasn’t an issue, as it would be, all on its own.

“Still, perhaps we should go inside -- you should sit down?” this too was phrased more like a question. “I only have this one chair out here,” he said obviously, hand like a steadying anchor on the back of the very chair. “Not having many visitors, you see.”

He agreed easily, seeing Morse was proposing this because he didn’t know what else to do with him, and grabbing at anything to stretch the visit and prolong the time before he had to explain himself. He watched as Morse fumbled through closing up the record player and trying to gather it up, along with his side table and fallen book to bring along inside. Morse seemed rattled, fumbling and awkward in a way he hadn’t since the very earliest days. Was he making him nervous? He never had before, at least that Fred had always thought so. He tried to reach for the record player case to spread the load but Morse would not relinquish it. He surrendered the bamboo and rattan end table instead, which Fred tucked under his arm, a weightless and creaking burden, and tried to ignore the sense of being treated as an invalid.

Morse kept sneaking glances at him from under his long, veiling lashes as though trying to take his measure without his notice. He never used to be so shy, thought Fred, before, he used to watch him openly, with the comfortable frankness of men who did not keep secrets from one another. Morse looked healthy, at least, golden and pink in the sun, faint freckles brushed across his cheek bones the way they usually did only in the summer. He looked sharper, though, even more lean and angled than he had been, before, either he was feeding himself even less, or the shock and strain of these two months had pared away the last measure of youthful softness from him. The effect was startling, making him seem to be not just his familiar bagman, not just the melancholy young man who had haunted particular dreams and worries of late, but also like a slightly foreign and unmeasured creature, and so wary that he could almost be a stranger. One of the bookish young professors who congregated in Oxford, fine boned, slouching, wistful and knowing in ways that he’d always pretended that he didn’t notice, and apparently friends with a young earl -- yet another thing which given how the boys at the station responded to men who they’d decided were trying to get above themselves meant that he could never have admitted to knowing the kind of set that were hanging around the big house when Fred had come by in his search. There was more and more to Morse, he was finding, which Morse had never seen fit to mention.

The cabin was near blindingly dim inside as they stepped from the false warmth of the white gold February sun to the cavernous interior. It was humid, damp and cool inside, and though the windows all had their curtains pulled wide, it was shaded by the steady shelter of the evergreens, leaving it twilight dim even though it was midday. Morse bustled in ahead of him and clicked on lamps, one on the small dining table tucked close to the wall not far from the entrance, one on the bookshelves that stood on the blank wall beyond the kitchen bench, and one on the aged bedside cabinet at the far end of the summer house, none of them strong bulbs under their grasscloth shades but light enough to make the gloom warm and creamy, friendly. There was a small kitchenette, a sink, a pale blue stove unit of some age, a clean but scarred stretch of wooden kitchen bench with cupboards above and shelves below, covered with faded blue curtains. There was an old craftsman armchair with wooden plank arms beside the dining table, and a pair of ladder backed dining chairs with dusty rope seats, one by the table and one in the kitchen area and stacked high with suitcases. At the other end of the long rectangle of the cabin, spaced apart from the kitchen and dining area by bookcases, shelves, and windows, there was a wood stove on a half-round brick hearth. Beside it was another armchair, this one round, padded and covered in threadbare velveteen the color of fox-fur, beside which Morse directed him to set the cane table, and in the corner a set of decorative shelves spilling with indistinct decorative objects left over from previous occupants and a blue-glazed pot with a trailing fern. There was a daybed with a brass frame on the opposite wall, piled up with blankets and pillows and books in mismatched assortment, nearly hiding the fact that it was a bed at all. Fred wondered how much he excavated it to sleep at night. The smell of the place was a combination of earthy, crisp, winter woodland greenery, tangy woodsmoke, the cloy of damp, a tannic musk of tea from the kitchen and a faint note of the human warmth that was familiar from long nights in the station or long days in the car.

Fred watched as Morse set the portable player back on its creaking table and moved bidably over to the table when Morse waved him towards the armchair there. Morse busied himself at the stove, putting on the kettle without asking, keeping his back turned. The small square window over the sink was cracked open a few inches, as was the window by the table, so a faint breeze fluttered through, keeping the steam from the kettle from condensing over their heads in the low, beamed ceiling. Fred found that he was staring at Morse, too concentratedly even to worry about the awkward silence that hung as heavily as the winter damp. He shifted uneasily and tried to ask himself what he had intended with this visit, what he could or should say without giving away too much.

“You didn’t come to see me,” Fred said, without having entirely decided to. 

Morse’s back, in his thick, red fitted jumper went stiff and still. His hands froze where he was readying the glossy brown teapot. “No, I… no. I wasn’t… sure. Sure if I ought to.” 

The words emerged slowly, as though it was a great effort to chase them, or make them so thinly neutral. “It had already been so long, by then. By the time I could,” he added, and then put the tea tin back up on it’s shelf with a fumbling bang.

“You didn't have any choice in that, Morse,” Fred said fiercely, “It was unconscionable, them doing that to you. We all knew that.”

“But you’re alright now?” asked Morse, turning to look at him. His hands were braced on the counter behind him as though he was holding himself up, or like a man backing himself into a corner. The look on his face was urgent, sharp, stricken in a way that Fred half remembered from that strange, awful night.

“It’s been more than two months, Morse. Wasn’t pleasant, some stages, but I’m on my feet again, and fine now. Back to the station next week, in fact,” he said. He was looking forward to the big return, though he’d be stuck on desk duty at first, unless he bent the rules. The normalcy of work appealed to him, like a sign of his world slowly righting itself.

“Good. That’s good,” said Morse forcefully, and then was startled by the boiling whistle of the kettle. He was so tightly wound, thought Fred, as bad as after the Coke-Norris shooting all over again.

“I suppose I've been a bit disconnected from time, living out here,” said Morse, almost like an apology. “Come to think of it, I was disconnected from time in there, too. Segregation for my own protection, you see.”

“Morse,” Fred began, startled, anguished, but Morse shook his head in emphatic dismissal and Fred subsided. 

“It was for the best, I’m sure. While I’d bet they didn’t really do it for my sake, it did work out that way. Not a mark on me when they finally came to their senses and dismissed the arrest. As I’m sure Strange reported to you.”

“Well, yes, he did as a matter of fact, because he’s your friend and mine, and he knew I’d been going out of my mind with worry about you, only I was stuck in the godforsaken recovery ward, with no way of doing anything about any of it.”

Morse went chagrined and cringing all at once, a reaction too profound for the small bite Fred’s words and tone. He wanted to take it back immediately and yet he’d meant it, he’d been helpless and he’d been angry about it, and he couldn’t abide Morse thinking he’d been abandoned to his fate. 

“Not terribly effective back up for you after all, was I? As it turns out.” said Morse. He said it offhandedly as though Fred couldn’t instantly tell that he’d spent the last 9 weeks blaming himself. 

“It wasn’t a fair fight, Morse. I know what I was risking when I went there, it’s what I signed up for with this job. And what I was risking in going to that showdown that night. I certainly don’t blame you for anything that happened. You were willing to show up, believe in my crusade when no one else was. The only thing I regret is that our crusade accomplished so little. Bright says they’re hushing it all up, with Angela McDerritt dead and unable to testify with all she knew, they’re going to have an easy time of it. Thanks to her, there’s a predator gone from the world, and maybe some of his allies have rethought themselves, but it’s not what we pictured, is it.”

“Do you think they would have prosecuted her, if she’d lived? That there would have been a trial?”

“She shot him in cold blood, Morse. I’m certain there would have been a trial, though I also doubt she would have hanged for it. At the same time, it wasn’t exactly self defense.”

“No, but she saved my life. He would have shot me, too. I froze, you see. When I saw you go down. Useless, completely,” he said bitterly. He abandoned the empty mugs he’d taken from the cupboard beside the tea pot and reached back in to pull out a bottle of scotch instead. It was mostly full, at least, Fred thought, so he could pretend that Morse wasn’t overindulging too often, out here alone in the woods. Maybe he wasn’t in fact, he was an awfully long way from the nearest off licence. Morse raised the bottle in his direction, in question, do we let go of the pretense of civility, tea in the afternoon, and begin to drink instead?

Fred nodded and sat back in his chair, feeling the effort of the day and the conversation heap upon him, like a blow to his gut, all that they had put each other through these last, world-tilting several weeks. The warm, bitter fug of over-steeped tea hung in the chilly air and Fred wasn’t any more interested in drinking it than Morse was, thinking of that night. Seeing him made it all seem more believable, more absolute and vivid than it had since the beginning, when he first awoke in hospital. He wasn’t on the pills anymore, he could have a drink with Morse and try to get it all out in the open so they could begin to move on. Almost all, anyway. Some of it he meant never to tell Morse, never to risk tearing apart his life that completely. 

Morse set out the glasses and poured out, and then at last came around the table and settled in the sagging dining chair, not quite next to and not quite across from Fred. The table was small enough that as he sat and shifted, their knees brushed, just slightly. Fred had to make an effort not to flinch back, not unhappy with the contact but hyper aware of his touch. “He came in shooting,” he said gruffly, “it was never going to go any other way. Sometimes that’s the job.”

“It’s the job? Really, sir? It’s the job that I saw you bleeding on the floor and stopped being able to think or move, not able to shoot the man who wanted to kill us both, not even to go get help -- that’s what you expected, that’s the line of duty?” it was the vitriol of shame that was pouring out of him.

Morse sipped at his glass like he was taking medicine, with a wince and a hunch of his shoulders. Fred drank too and felt the heat of it immediately, and realized he’d have to go easy it had been a long time since he’d sat down for a drink with anyone. He wondered if Morse knew what he was saying, if he realized what he sounded like. There was a part of him, that selfish, longing part, that thrilled with intemperate hope at the idea that Morse had been just as struck with… he cleared his throat awkwardly, trying to pick his way to neutral reassurance. 

“I’m glad you were there with me, Morse,” Fred said, holding his gaze. If understanding could be an act of will, he would try it. “I wouldn’t have wanted anyone else with me that night. No matter what you think of what happened, that’s the absolute truth.”

A gust of chill wind blew through the kitchen window, ruffling the curtains and cooling the embarrassed flush of his skin. He wet his lips with scotch, feeling the warmth of it on his tongue, and Morse watched him with the avid, all-seeing, skepticism that seemed sometimes to be his most honest and heartfelt state of being. Fred knew that he wasn’t being outright disbelieved, but Morse wasn’t a man given to easy trust and Fred was asking him to understand and accept something enormous and unlikely, from any outside point of view. Morse watched and watched him, studying and deciding, and then something eased in his face, the set of his body on the edge of his chair. A calm stole over him, or a realization, his eyes wide and wondering, his sun-touched face going even more pink. 

Morse sat forward, leaning almost entirely against the table so that it sighed faintly with the force of his weight, earnest and confessional. “I had to be there, with you. If something-- if it had gone wrong, even more wrong than-- and I had to live with knowing that I hadn’t… it had to be both of us, or neither of us, do you see? I didn’t want to think of a world without-- of course, real life doesn’t work out with such neat poetic justice, for which I’m grateful, but to imagine it that night, all or nothing… you and me, and then to have it play out as it did…”

“No battle goes how you picture it, Morse. Men have been learning that since the beginning. That’s not a failure on your part.”

“I fell apart. I didn’t defend us, I didn’t try to talk him down, all I did was stand there calling him a bastard and trying to keep my legs from giving out,” said Morse, full of outrage against himself, and apology or something that gave him that pleading look. “It, uh, it helped me decide some things about myself, in a way.”

“Oh?”

“Yes. about my lack of suitability for the police. Among other things.”

“Come on, Morse, you don’t believe that. How many times have you proved some bugger wrong who tried to say you didn’t belong in the job, by showing just how much you can do?”

“Well, maybe they’ve been right all along. And even if they weren’t, after they tried to frame me, after they still managed to sweep it under the rug -- why should I go on trusting an organization like that?”

“You trust me, don’t you?”

Morse took a gulp of his drink and then set it aside, making a face, pained annoyance, refusal, something like that, and then gave Fred an odd look. He was knowing and quietly accusing all at once. “That’s the question, isn’t it, sir.”

“Oh, for God’s sake, Morse, you can’t doubt that after--” he exclaimed, hurt, sharply hurt and shocked.

“Not like them, of course not,” he said with a disregarding shake of his head, “I mean… trust that you still could-- If we...” he trailed off and gave up, scraping his fingers back through his unruly hair, taut with some prodding emotion. “I mean. How much do you remember about that night, after… just before help came?”

Fred thought of the dream, the almost dream he’d had as he slipped under the tide of shock, Morse’s desperation, the almost memory of Morse’s weight against his chest counterbalancing the sharp pain. Maybe the memory of Morse’s distress-contorted face pressed hot against his neck, until the scrum of approaching warning, shouting, interceding voices had come and scared or lifted him away. He thought, for the first time in weeks, directly about the dreams that had caught him and frightened him in the vivid depths of morphine and frustration, forcing realization upon him, his body against him in a different way, warm and pliant and smiling that faint enigmatic smile of his, in a world that had nothing to do with blood and worry. Not imagined flesh, no, but imagined heat and the half remembered urgency of fumbling and fulfilling, of what he’d tried to forget of how a man’s body could feel against his, for pleasure not struggle. Fred felt his face burn with it, with shame and interest and the awkward uncertainty of it. Morse couldn't be asking about even half of that, could he? With that sheepish, daring expression on his face, which could be masking anything, it was hard to tell what he was after.

“Just say it, Morse. Just say what you’re trying to ask me.” He felt pulled needle-thin and drum-tight with the anticipation, dreadful, hopeful, fed up with all of it, all at once, with these mincing oblique words and the vague impossibility of trying to talk about it. Morse’s cryptic hints, his self pity, Fred’s own agonized and knowingly selfish longing to have this young man and fling himself on his care. “You made me chase you all the way out here to these woods to hear your confession, so let’s hear it.”

Morse hunched in on himself, startled by Fred’s words, bracing himself against them and perhaps against whatever it was he was about to say. But he didn’t argue, for once. Instead he looked down at his drink, clear blue eyes shuttered. “I realized that I had meant it, that night. I realized that I still mean it, that I would rather die with you than live on without-- that I-- that I felt, feel, more than what I…” Morse paused, breathed, rubbed at the side of his neck with an impatient, self-comforting movement. “They wouldn't tell me if you were alright, and I felt like I’d lost my mind. They put me in a cell and left me, and they wouldn’t even tell me if you had lived and I could have been dying, too, I thought, I felt. They had to pull me away from you, do you remember that? I fell apart, let them see-- And I don’t know what I said to you, but I know that it was…. Do you remember? Is that why you came to find me? Because you don’t have to worry, I’m not going to make trouble-- even if I thought the force was still something I could be a part of, I wouldn’t try to make this be a part of, of what we do. You don’t have to tell me that it can’t be.”

“I came to find you because I needed to. Morse. You… what you’re talking about, how much you worried, all of it, that’s how much I needed to know you were alright. That’s how much I had to see you, find out that you’d survived it whole and safe.” He said it slowly and with heavy emphasis, willing Morse to understand just how equally sunk they were. He’d been desperate and hadn't even realized it consciously, not until the awful knot in his chest began to unwind at the sight of him. “And when I finally got back on my feet, you were gone and no one could tell me where. Can you imagine what that was like, Morse?”

He slumped farther in his chair, rotating his glass slowly in his fingers. “I’m not sure if we’re talking about quite the same kind of feeling,” he said defensively, not directly answering -- though Fred could see that it was a kind of answer that, that’s he’d been overwhelmed and hadn’t known how to cope with what had been stirred up. And an answer, too about the nature of the concern, the nature of his own longing and worries, maybe purposefully, or maybe incidentally even as he tried to protect himself against Fred’s questioning, and against false hopes.

Fred knew that what he wanted was stupidity itself. He knew that he should ease Morse back towards the force, let him know that this tumult would ease, that his feelings weren’t unwelcome but couldn’t be acknowledged. Maybe even let him go on thinking that what he thought Morse might have been confessing to was just as unreciprocated as he believed, maybe even unnoticed. Let him down gently to keep him safe, from the dangers of their nature, from the consequences of Fred’s selfishness. He steeled himself for the shame and disappointment he would see in Morse, knowing he should follow through with this denial, cutting at both of them to ensure they could both thrive in the end. He braced himself for the wash of sick regret and guilt and loss that would come over him when he smashed his own hopes. He tried to plan the words he would say, something firm but not cruel, he hoped.

Then Fred put down his glass, feeling a fine, internal tremor begin in his breastbone, anticipation. He reached out and touched Morse’s wrist -- having not decided to, but now that he had, thrilling with it -- stilling Morse’s fidgeting, feeling the chill of the cabin on his skin, and the smoothness of it, the quick beating warmth of him underneath. He knew in the instant before he spoke that the longing, half buried part of him had reached out, had woken entirely. Knew that he would not, after all, deny himself and Morse. Knew that he had decided, after all. “Morse,” he said, leaning in to catch his eye and waiting til he knew he was paying attention. He felt flushed despite the cold. “Morse, believe me, we’re talking about exactly the same kind of feeling,” he said, clear and soft and wholly heart-felt, to Morse’s awestruck face. 

**


	3. intimacy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> an interlude of intimacy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I considered appending this to the next chapter, but that looked likely to push the boundaries of any sensible word count and there was a natural stopping point. Also, I angsted so much over this section, that when it turned out, I wanted to show it off immediately ;)
> 
> Be aware that this is the first 'Earn The M Rating' chapter, so proceed with caution if that's not something you're totally comfortable with. But on the other hand, I felt that more than a total fade-to-black/cut-to-bedsheets-and-afterglow was necessary for character development, so I hope you'll trust me.
> 
> (also I made a chapter number guess, but don't quote me on that lol)
> 
> With immense thanks and gratitude to [Obstinetrix](https://archiveofourown.org/users/obstinatrix/pseuds/obstinatrix) for her beta work and hand holding! Don't know how this fic would going at this point, without your cheerleading <3

The short February day had already drawn to a close, the cabin lost the small degree of warmth it had had. Morse told him to wait and finish his drink while he closed the windows and stoked up the fire in the small wood stove. Morse spent a long time over it, fussing with the kindling and bringing in a fresh armload from the pile on the porch, only stepping back when the fire was merrily bright and warmth began to permeate from the end of the cabin. He was avoiding, Fred thought, prickled and disappointed, grasping for distraction. Or maybe, given the furtive, curious, concerned glances he cast his way, Morse really was worried about the chill. 

“But you’re a married man,” Morse had said in a strange, outraged whisper. 

“Yes, I am,” he’d said solemnly, “And I’ve known you to go out with a fair number of women in the last two years, if you’re asking about the singularity of my interests. In fact, I found you out here through that nice young nurse you seem to have left by the wayside. You of all people know that what you see might not tell the whole story.” Fred left him to fill in the rest of the equation himself, that the two were not mutually exclusive, that you might still occasionally go mad and start developing a craving for some strange and rare man who might happen to stumble across your path. It didn’t make it easier to bear or less staggeringly dangerous to all involved, but it couldn’t be impossible, or ruled out with these simple equations because it was evident, painfully evident in their lives now. “And as for anything else you’re asking, all I can say is that… these risks are mine to take.” 

They were his, Fred’s life and security to choose to risk for that craving, and he didn’t take that lightly, but seeing that Morse was caught, too, made him eager to shoulder the burden. He was glad he wasn’t alone with it. Maybe that was why he had thrown his good intentions away, the sheer relief of finding that his madness wasn’t solitary. 

He didn’t think he’d gone out there to confess anything or complicate both of their lives. Fred was almost certain that the only thing he’d wanted was to see for himself that Morse was well, and had recovered himself from the depths after being falsely imprisoned, whatever anger burned in him. But the sight of Morse’s awed, avid eyes as he’d realized, the way his hand had turned and grasped and trembled in his as they’d done no more than sit across from each other in wonder. That had shown him that this was always what he’d wanted, always what he'd meant to make happen, from the moment he’d awoken in a hospital bed, with these wants, this feeling engraved in his being. 

**

The little cabin wasn’t so bad, with the stove alive and glowing through its grubby window, dispelling the bulk of the damp chill of a February evening. It wasn’t smaller than the attic flat all told. Perhaps larger, when accounting for where the strange angles of the walls and ceiling had made various spaces there unusable in that attic, and with a bath that was more than just a narrow closet, but a square room appended at some point after the after the initial structure was built, so that the wall that was shared with the kitchenette was the same plank siding as the rest of the cabin, now enclosed. There was room enough for Morse to live, and shelves to store his records. The electricity worked most of the time, unless the wind blew hard enough to interrupt the lines from the main house, and when that happened there was a supply of kerosene and a trio of old brass lamps with sooty glass shades, the use of which made him feel both nervous and disproportionately capable. There was even space to walk between the kitchenette and the dining area, and the sitting area, with its hearth and saggy arm chair and bookcases, and the high-piled daybed. The cupboards were full of borrowed and left over items, pots and pans, heavy ceramic cups and plates in robin's egg blue that must have been purchased to match the curtains in some bygone era before they faded. Most of the decorative objects sitting on the shelves around the cabin were things he never would have chosen, abandoned over the years by the Donn family and their friends, but there was still room enough for his books, and a cedar cabinet beside the bed where he could keep his clothes. It was not the smallest place he’s ever stayed, or the most uncomfortable. It was a temporary lodging even though Anthony’s generosity seemed endless, his own pride demanded that he find a way of supporting himself and living independently before too long, and the backdrop of his life was certain to change again. He could make himself comfortable here until then. 

Tony had reached out to him when he’d been feeling most acutely like a specimen pinned to an examination board by the inquest, the release, the concern that he was about to snap or break that had been apparent in Monica, and Strange and Bright’s faces when he spoke to any of them. The arrest and the reversal had been in the newspapers, though he hadn’t brought himself to read any of the coverage once he was free to do so. He trusted that Dorothea Frazil had been fair, as fair as was possible under the circumstances. Anthony had seen his name dragged down and then back up in the public eye, and had sought him out with offers of friendly dinners, and when he confessed to no longer being teetotal, to drinks, and afternoons of entertainment among his set. Tony had known him before Susan and had tried to remain his friend afterward, so Morse was less embarrassed than he might have been to be seen by a spectre from his past in that condition than he might have been. Tony had seen him in pieces before. 

Eventually Morse had confessed that as he was leaving the police, and that he wouldn’t be able to keep up his flat, might not be able to stay in Oxford if he couldn’t sort out alternative arrangements quickly -- and though Gwen loathed him and his father was no longer there to enforce his presence in the family, Lincolnshire and his sister’s generosity might be his only options before long. Anthony, having some idea of how unspeakable that would be, had offered him lodging at the big house, saying that his friends often did come to stay for great lengths, especially if the cricket club was going or his remarkable friend Bixby was in town and up to something, and that he did have a few friends staying at the moment, some of whom he thought Pagan might actually like. Morse balked at the idea of being plunged in among strangers, so Tony had offered him the Summer House by the lake house instead. “It’s a primitive, pokey little place, don’t let me mislead you, but there’s plumbing and electricity and a great edwardian cast iron wood stove to keep you from turning into an icicle-- and you’d be very much welcome up at the big house whenever these deprevations got to be too much for you.”

He’d debated with himself for a day or two, but an awkward conversation with Monica that showed that their relationship had evaporated some time in the last month, and the looming prospect of the need to come up with rent money decided him. There was a poetic starkness to the idea of going out to the woods and staying there that appealed to his stunned and muffled frame of mind. Tony took him out to see the place, apparently expecting him to come to his senses and accept the comfortable room at the house over the primitive cabin, but much to his friend’s bemusement, he accepted the Summer House and all its limitations. Tony did insist on his meeting the rest of the set up at the house, but Morse withstood it alright, and even let them drag out the old Pagan nickname without kicking up a fuss. Probably that was what showed Tony that he was in worse shape than he’d thought, the quiet biddability that wasn’t natural to him in the better time, and let him go back to the flat he was abandoning and begin packing. Let him keep to himself without pushing him to come out and play along. At first, anyway, though the invitations got more insistent as the weeks wore on. 

The last week of January by the lakeside was bitterly cold and damp, and he had to adjust to the sound of rain dripping off the eves and the lake birds that wintered there and the creak of the the tall trees in the wind around the cabin instead of the Oxford traffic and the familiar regiments of bells tolling out the days. He wondered if he’d made a grave mistake, as he shivered sleeplessly in the clammy daybed and tried to convince himself to get up and stoke up the fire and it died away the first several nights. But the idea of returning to town, so soon after everything, was equally repellant. He decided he would stay and that he would make himself enjoy the place, the distraction of it’s difficulty. It was a change. It was a much more vivid, active state than being locked in a small brick room, paralyzed with fear, for himself and for Thursday -- still, in his mind, bleeding on the floor -- even though he’d still been on the scene when the ambulance men arrived and bundled him away. It was different, also, than sitting in the attic flat, startled and boiling with fury and disappointment, surrounded with the broken pieces of his former life still metaphorically scattered around him.

With a little time and determination, Morse did grow fond of the place. Found that he even felt a measure of pride at how he’d tamed the place. He didn’t even mind that he had to walk up to the house and beg a ride if he wanted to go into town, he didn't need to very often. Tony was always sending him back with bags of supplies when he spent time with the rest of them at the manor. The mild wilderness and the extensive distance were working to insulate the dreadful snare of tension that had lived in him since Blenheim Vale, even the chill and persistent feeling that the weather was about to follow him inside lent an air of pleasing distance. 

With Thursday’s eyes on the place, serious, concerned and questioning, he began to remember again the oddness of his situation, the shabbiness of the cabin. He remembered that he was living on a generous friend. That he was hiding in the woods. It made him want to promise that he would move on, and it made him want to dig in further; entrench himself in the woods and never come out and face the real world again, like some stumbling English Emerson with his own pond and his own personal sense of resentful despair. And he didn’t know what he would say or promise to get Thursday to stop looking at him like he didn’t understand what he was doing, but he didn’t think it was a good idea.

He made tea, and then gave up on the safer choice and got out the scotch. And then, Thursday managed to turn everything he knew about him, and everything about the misery of his hopeless situation on its head. 

He still didn’t know if Thursday remembered the things he’d said that night. The quiet miserable whisper after Wintergreen was dead and he had been free to fall on his knees and fail to do anything useful to stop the bleeding, not knowing until he heard the sirens that help would come at all. He wasn’t entirely sure what he’d said either, he’d been desperate and insensible with shock, but he knew it was damning, especially to a man who could read people as well as Thursday could -- and yet instead of damning him, Thursday had taken his hand and told him that he felt the same. And his shocking joy was tempered with the outrage with himself that he had gone all this way to hide them from Thursday, knowing at once that that’s what he had done -- when he could have just seen him and spoken to himself and not been cast out in disgust.

He’d had to move, then, offering tea again after all, tidying some things off the dining table so he could set down the pot, noticing the creeping bitterness of the short day and getting the fire going so they wouldn’t both freeze when full dark came. He didn’t know how long Thursday could stay and he knew that those actions were not exactly flattering in the face of such a declaration, but he felt like an explosion had gone off inside him. Not a genteely emphatic metaphor for passions but an ugly collision of joy and panic, of blinding hope and self disgust that he would think of letting himself, that he would tempt this man. This good, good man, who was married and respectable. How could he?

When there was nothing else to do he turned from the hearth and faced Thursday again in something like questioning outrage. “How can you even think about this? It could destroy everything, your whole life, all you’ve built-- not matter what I might, what you and I do find ourselves feeling, facing, it can’t-- I’m, selfishly, glad I know that I didn't lose your respect because of this. But you can’t…” he trailed off, not even having the words for what he meant. The phrases ‘sully himself’ and ‘affair’ floated through his mind but were impossible to voice.

“I know what I’m risking, Morse. Probably far better than you do. But I’m here anyway. Because--” he paused and seemed to struggle over his words or come to a decision. He stood and carefully approached, hands out, as though gentling a nervous animal or a skittish witness. “Because after what we went through, I know that it isn’t something I could just ignore. This whole time, recovering, I’ve been trying to put it aside but it won’t go.”

Morse tried to convince himself that he could go on denying what he desperately wanted while it was being offered, insisted upon, even. But he’d always known that he wasn’t that strong, especially not against temptation. He was hot and cold all over with it. He was trembling with it. 

He held still and watched Thursday’s approach, feeling hollow and electric like the air before a storm. When Thursday’s large, warm hands settled at last against his waist, he melted numb and over sensitive all at once, and sagging helplessly against Thursday’s great, steady chest. Not a swoon, like he’d done a time or two into his ready grasp, but like the heavy exhausted limpness that came from tears, and yet he was not crying -- even though he was overwhelmed both with sorrow and with joy. He had simply reached a surfeit and with Thursday finally (finally, he had been waiting without being able to consciously think about his waiting) there to catch him, he’d given in.

Thursday steered him over to the soft comfort of the day bed, and they sat, carefully, while he tried to recover his senses. Thursday’s was firm around him, his face pressed against Thursday’s shoulder, against the nap of his dark grey overcoat, which he had still yet to shed. Eventually, he realised that Thursday had his own face pressed against his hair, and also seemed to tremble, was clutching him hard and then trying to soothe, over and over. It was so much, so shockingly vital and close. Intimacy like nothing he had known. 

“You have to come back with me,” said Thursday, a rough tone he felt also in his back, astonishingly close. 

“And do what? Go back to work? Go back to scorn and corruption, and not being allowed to talk with you except for when you let me drive you somewhere?”

“It doesn’t have to be like that,” Thursday said urgently. He shifted, turning, burrowing down so that his breath puffed against Morse’s neck, ticklish and thrilling. He could never have imagined this. He’d never allowed it even to appear in his mind’s eye as a spectre of possibility or fantasy fulfilled. Yet even so, he couldn’t picture any future beyond the dismal image he’d described for them going forward on the possible lines of their lives. 

“How?” he said, with strangled hope, “How could it be anything else?”

“I don’t know,” said Thursday, “But I have to think it’s possible. I have to. You can’t just walk away. Not now.”

“Alright,” said Morse, softly, not because he believed it but because he wanted to pretend it could be. That they could be. “Alright, yes, this, we can…” Morse whispered, promising.

He disengaged slightly, easing Thursday away just enough to shift in his arms, all knees and reaching arms, and then found his mouth with his own. “Alright,” he murmured against his skin, heart racing, agreeing, asking for anything Thursday could or would give him. He hadn’t let himself think farther, at any time, than wanting him, what it could feel like -- to imagine had seemed a trespass too far, like tempting the cruelty of fate, but here they were now, Thursday welcoming him with his hands, his mouth, and he allowed himself to imagine, just ahead of possibility. 

“We can have this,” said Thursday, urgent and slurred with kisses, “We can.” 

Thursday’s grip, his stirring, soothing hands were deft and unhesitating, steadying him as Morse urged them down against the bed, half reclining face to face on a spill of decorative pillows. Morse tried to brace his feet against the floor, sliding against the bedside rug to try to get enough leverage so that he could pull. He wanted Thursday above him, desperately wanted to be pinned in place, wanted to be impressed upon with that broad power of him which he’d always admired, first in the abstract and then with specific, physical longing. He put his hands on Thursday’s shoulders and kneaded, frustrated with the heavy coating getting in his way. Morse took his coat collar in his fist and tugged impatiently, “Off,” he insisted, pleading, “please, ‘s warm enough.” 

“Yes. You, too, come on,” he said, pulling meaningfully at his sweater. Thursday shed the coat in rushed movements and let it fall somewhere over the edge of the mattress. His suit jacket followed, and then, encouraged by Morse's hungry stare and by his clumsy, rapid shucking of sweater, creased white shirt, thin, overwashed undershirt to sit on the bed in his pink flushed skin and trousers, Thursday shed his carefully pressed shirt, unbuckle his belt. He paused then, maybe in hesitation or maybe to watch Morse as his eagerness-numbed fingers fumbled through untying his work boots. He let the boots thud to the floor, and then paused, too, hands reaching for one sock. Thursday’s attention was heavy on him, making his cheeks burn. 

He felt awkward, angular, maybe over eager. He wanted this desperately, his cock had stirred when Thursday had first pulled him close and clung and now he ached, sweated. He licked his lips, picturing those big, beloved hands on him. 

“It’s been a long time, but I have-- there have been,” Morse assured, stumbling through confession, and compromising promise, “I know what to do, you don’t have to worry.”

“Do you, lad?” asked Thursday, a low, curious murmur. He looked Morse over, as though reassessing him, or trying to divine who, and when, and how, but he didn’t ask. Slid out of his own shoes and trousers instead -- his undershirt and undershorts were white and soft. 

Morse could see the real dimension of Thursday’s sturdy shoulders, and of his bare arms, which he had never seen, that were firm and broad and pale but burnished in the gold light; his surprisingly elegant wrists, which Morse had noticed occasionally, under a shirt cuff. He looked down. The undershorts were loose enough to show the shape of his arousal, half hard and thick. It twitched under the scrutiny and he felt his own cock throb. He swallowed with a dry click. He was frozen in a flood of competing immediate desires. Thursday broke his reverie, and reached over to knead at Morse’s tense shoulder, soothe the back of his neck. He scratched gently at the short hairs at his nape, making him shiver, goosebumps tightening his skin all over, and then eased him slowly back against the length of the bed. 

“You can tell me what you like, then, hmm?” Thursday leaned down and kissed him, lips parted and teasing. “What makes you feel good.” A knee, settling carefully between his thighs, his hips jerked against it with involuntary eagerness, making an approving noise, startled noise at the back of his throat. “What we can do together, what you’ve thought about.”

“I don’t know, I…” he didn’t have the words, chased Thursday’s mouth instead, and slid his hands up under his loose tee shirt, feeling warm, smooth skin and the play of his muscles as he braced himself against the bed. “I’ve pictured… feelings mostly. I didn’t want to trick myself into expecting, well. But I have wanted you to-- push me. To crowd me, hold-- make me…”

“Not make, surely,” said Thursday, “You know I wouldn’t--”

“Not in a bad way,” he said peering up at him, slyly, “I like to be made to feel things. It’s good for me.”

“I see,” Thursday rumbled, settling himself more firmly against him, eyebrow quirking with a knowing smile, “You need to be taken care of. Just like I’ve always said. In a way.”

Morse hummed happily. He’d never liked when Thursday said that about him, it had felt like scolding, like trying to shrug him off into someone else’s hands. Now, he could see that Thursday had meant it in a different way, all along. That maybe he had been saying ‘I wish I could take care of you and I don’t see how,’ and now, he had found a way. 

“So, take care of me, then,” he said, shifting eagerly. He ran his fingers through Thursday’s heavy, silky hair, pulling him nearer. Thursday agreed against his skin, and then bit ever so lightly at the tender edge of his jaw.

Thursday freed a hand and stroked slowly up Morse’s side, touch firm and mapping, fingertips smooth and clever. He studied Morse, his face more open, curious, even reverent, as he sought out his shape, the places that made him sigh or make strained, longing noises as he stroked, or pinched and soothed. Then he pulled at Morse’s waistband. “Trousers off, Morse, or we’ll make a mess of you,” said Thursday, an order and a promise. 

He reached and squirmed to obey, thinking first of the obligatory gracelessness of slithering out of one's trousers and undershorts in moments when one most wants to be alluring, and then of the sensation of skin on skin. Thursday helped to ease them off, and then slid away for a moment to shed the rest of his clothes too, equal footing. Then he came back to stroke along his hips, his flanks, laying broad palms, smooth and hot, flat on the tops of his thighs, and stroked with his thumbs, teasing with intent. Morse’s hips jumped and he turned his head, hiding behind the crook of his arm, overwhelmed. He ached now, hard and wound taut already with sheer anticipation and light friction, cock hot and wet against his stomach. The air was heavy with the tang of sex, of clean sweat in the close air around the blazing stove. 

“Alright, Morse?” Thursday asked quietly, hand trailing upward, closing around him.

He made a startled, pleading noise in answer, and the hand paused. 

“This alright?” Thursday repeated, a little more clearly, a little more insistent. “You alright under there?”

He lowered his arm, rejoining the world and meeting Thursday’s gaze. Such dark, infinitely thoughtful eyes, he’d always thought, under such poetically arched brows, always taking him in so sincerely, now feverishly bright and hungry. Thursday was flushed with the heat, with their activity, a healthy rose bloom on his cheeks. His expressive mouth was parted, wet, swollen with kisses.

“Is this real?” asked Morse in a breathy voice, “You are here, aren’t you? I haven’t simply, finally gone mad and imagined you-- this, all I wanted?” There were tears standing in the corners of his eyes, he realized, an excess of emotion, joyous and fearful, still the long shadow cast by two months uncertain separation. He ran his hands up Thursday’s arms in reassurance or question, feeling the fine, silky dark hairs there under his fingers.

“Yes,” Thursday said, grave -- guessing perhaps, what Morse was remembering, or feeling it himself -- but wondering also. He looked between Morse’s pleasure-anguished face and the slender, eager prick in his hand, and Morse’s own encouraging, slender hands on his arms and back again, hooded gaze knowing. “This is very, truly real. It will be, too. I promise, Morse, we can make it real. We can.”

“Alright,” said Morse, taking a deep breath and trying to steady himself between the shouting arousal in his blood and the wild hope beating fast in his breast, “I believe you. Come here, though, I want…”

Thursday let him guide him forward, grabbing with hands, and knees so their bodies aligned, chest to chest, belly to belly, cock to cock, his world narrowing down to skin, sensation, the need for friction, to thrust, to fuck or be fucked. It had been a long time since he’d done either, in any manner, with another man, but he had thought about it with Thursday, sometimes, when he couldn’t prevent himself -- a jumble of images, the gentleness of his hands guiding him away from a gory crime scene, the length of his legs as they loped after a suspect, his broad back and unyielding strength as he restrained someone, maybe too hard, but in a way that made him notice. He reached down to line them up just so, to explore. Thursday groaned at the touch, eyes hooded in pleasure. He moved experimentally, and then again, harder, and Morse flung a leg around his hips and whined in approval. The bedsprings whined and squealed, too, under his knees, making Thursday laugh against his skin.

“‘S not used to this kind of rough use, I suppose,” he said, with a sly smile.

“I wouldn’t be too sure. Antony keeps all his disreputable artist friends here. Must have seen a fair few tumbles.”

“Is that what you are now?” Thursday asked. His hand joined in, stroking them both, confident and skilled. “A kept disreputable artist friend?”

“Only disreputable, not kept,” said Morse breathlessly, struggling to keep a train of thought but wanting to assure Thursday of this, tell him this. “Not by him, anyway.” He squirmed at the earnestness of it, the plaintive question, but he didn’t take it back. He meant it.

Thursday said his name, with surprise and low reverence. Kissed him then, in place of another promise that might not stand in the face of forces beyond their control, dragged him down into thoughtless sensation.

It was clear, as the game of give and take hurried on, that neither of them were entirely inexperienced with other men, and one day he would ask about that, when he was less consumed with the immediate and astonishing. The narrow bed proved to be restrictive, cramped and complaining under their shifting weight, but that didn’t matter. It was enough to begin learning each other by touch and by smell, with small sounds, with bold hands, watching each other with the same stunned joy. Intoxicating realization, oh, you are here, these are your hands, your skin under my hands, oh, you want me. A distracting state of wonder, the charged reverence that became of the mechanics of bodies, the questions and spontaneous rules of desire and sex, until all at once the revererence broke under the weight of desperation, of animal satisfaction and thrill. Morse hadn’t known such intimacy, such unhesitatingly shameless seeking in a very long time. And he felt -- supposed -- knew that Thursday was there with him in this, sharing in the helpless abandon.

**

Afterwards, he waited for the rush of embarrassment and exposure that often came to him after the first time with someone new -- and after many times later, if the relationship lasted in a kind of limbo of unknowns. It didn’t come. Though this, he and Thursday, an affair, in not quite stated love, or obsession, or something like both or either, was by far the most dangerous relationship he’d embarked on, but he didn’t feel ashamed of his skin, or the things that he’d said, or the things they had done and planned to do together. If it was to be an affair, it would be immoral, illegal, a betrayal of Thursday’s happy home (how happy could it be, if he was here with Morse, he wondered) but the shiver of shock he'd expected at what committed himself to never materialized. Perhaps he was already used to the idea. The thought of guilt was more a phantom sensation, far off and intangible compared with the immediacy of passion, compared with comfort and company, compared with Thursday’s head beside his on the pillow, and his arm slung, secure and heavy across his chest. Or compared with the fresh pink line of scar on Thursday’s skin, thankfully not underscoring his heart, which he’d run his lips against with care while refusing to think again about the blood. All of that was real, to him, and for a time it took up his whole mind. 

Thursday had murmured words of love and comfort to him while they calmed, and then had fallen into a heavy sleep. He realized with a strange jolt that this might well have been his first time since… Morse refused to think then to think about it, about his life at home, not while they were together this way. He dozed for a time, for long enough that when he opened his eyes again the light outside the cabin’s windows was velvet black and solid. 

He agonized over whether he ought to wake Thursday and send him home, but in the end he couldn't bear to, tenderly protective of his sleep, and his presence. Morse rose instead. He washed briefly in the small bath, leaving the door open so he could glance over, and see the dark shape of his new lover under the covers at the far end of the cabin. Morse dressed in soft trousers, an undershirt and another heavy sweater, still too cold, away from the penumbra of the hearth to consider breezy nudity or coy, half dressed intimacy. He picked up Thursday’s coat and hung it beside his own on the hooks by the door, and then stood to absorb the sight of their two draperies of grey wool side by side. He was disproportionately affected by it. 

This will not last, he told himself, in warning against the leaping upward, hopeful momentum he’d felt begin in his heart, and began to heat some soup, and some toast and cheese for their tea. 

**

“I can’t come back with you,” Morse told him at the end of the night, before Fred could ask him again. He’d been about to, and of course Morse had been able to tell. “Not yet, anyway. Maybe not ever, but at the least not now.”

“You will,” Fred assured him. “I know you need a little more time to put it all behind you. But I also know that brain of yours too well to believe you’re done for good. I won’t push you, though, don’t worry.”

“You can ask me, though, sometimes. And you visit me,” Morse said with a wide smile, glowing and rare, that was equal parts shy and knowing temptation, and Fred hadn’t been able to keep from kissing him again, fiercely. He hadn’t thought he’d be unwelcome if he came back again but it was good to be invited, wanted, coaxed. 

“I would go with you if I knew how,” Morse admitted in a small voice, eyes downcast as they parted. “Maybe I’ll remember how. But me being out here, away from the job, the partnership, gives us space to have this, I think. Out here, away from the normal shape of things for a time.”

Maybe he was right, but Fred didn’t like to think that this relationship, its new components, were a choice or an equation. That it would come down to a stark either-or, the work or this intimacy. He didn’t see it that way, and he didn’t think Morse truly did either, but he could almost see what Morse meant about possible and impossible. Could they have found the room to be this much to each other in between cases, while arguing theory in the car, combing over evidence, surrounded by Strange, Jakes, Bright, and all the trappings? He wasn’t sure. 

“I’ll come back,” Fred promised, “When I can. Soon. A few days? Before I go back to work next week, I know that much.”

“You’re already going back?”

“It’s been long enough. Jakes will be getting ideas, filling in,” he joked gently. “I’m alright now, Morse. You know that.”

“Mm. I do. Just strange to think, you being there at the station without me to look after you,” said Morse with a wistful smile.

“Well, you know the remedy for that,” he tried again wryly, but Morse just shook his head in fond dismissal, and Fred had already promised not to push. He wanted to ask again, he wanted to lead Morse back home, into his real life and away from this cold, pokey, damp little place that could be doing him no good, but he didn’t want Morse to think he didn’t trust him, or force him into stubborn petulance. He was asking enough of the man already. He didn’t want to spoil things before they’d really begun by trying to shape Morse’s life for him, when the man clearly knew what he wanted. Instead, he lifted a careful hand to Morse’s jaw and pressed a gentle but lingering kiss to the side of his mouth. 

“I’ll come back,” Fred said again.

“You’ll find me here,” said Morse, with his secretive smile and knowing eyes, and  
stepped back, and let him go.

**


	4. entrances

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Enter Bixby. Also, enter Morse's realization that he's chased himself down a blind alley in his life...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> on the plus side: my outline revision is shaping up! I now have much clearer picture of how this goes through the end of S3, after the Ride plot tapers off, which bridges me much more solidly with the S4 half of the story, which was always easier for me to picture. 
> 
> on the minus side: there are only a couple chapters left in what I had drafted last year, which means I get to shift into composition mode while still balancing the typing and editing. yay? No, I mean, with an outline that no longer has a big gap where the middle 3rd should be, I actually will be really enjoying writing ahead. I just need to keep a cushion of new material ahead of my typing and posting at all times, and I should be fine, right? (can you tell I'm slightly apprehensive? But not to stressed about it, don't worry!)
> 
> If any of you out there want to come say hi, and talk fic or morseverse or frendeavour, (and help me keep my level of enthusiasm for this verse going strong lol) I'm on tumblr, too, same name but without the underscores.

The guilt closed in on him on the drive back home like an oncoming tide. It wasn’t only that he’d put all thoughts of Win aside and gone to bed with someone else, it was that, as he drove back into town, this headlamps struggling against the nighttime mist which crouched in the damp lanes, he thought more of the man he’d left than of what he might say to explain his long absence or what amends he should already be planning. And he knew that he was more concerned with convenient excuses than with trying to think ahead to the possible consequences of what he was doing. It would be all three of their lives permanently altered and thrown into chaos if this -- even in his thoughts he wasn’t yet ready to approach the word ‘affair’ -- went wrong. The right thing to do would be to stop. The right thing would have been not to begin, but that choice had passed, and now Fred couldn’t contemplate unmaking it. 

Stopping outright, giving Morse up when he had just found him again, when he had just promised to return, was equally impossible. He saw as he drove that he had firmly decided, committed to continue, clinging fast to what Morse offered until something forced them apart. Fred marveled at this vein of selfishness, iron will or weakness he wasn’t sure, but Morse and his shining eyes and his sharpness had seemed so much more real to Fred than anything had in a long time. More real than the comfortable home to which he was returning, more real than the surgeon’s sepulchral x-ray film spelling his possible doom. 

Maybe he would get it out of his system, they both might. Maybe they would work off the intensity of their relationship and the left over charge of the shooting and finally come out the other side of it in a partnership more like those he’d had on the force, a steady trust and friendship without the bite, the galvanic kick of reckless obsession, possessiveness, clinging fixation -- whatever it was that had moved in motes of confusion and intensity since they began and had eventually led them here. And then they could move on, in a less destructive way. Morse could find a nice young woman to look after him -- they did flutter around him with so much interest, despite his brusque ways -- and Fred could make peace with himself, and Win would never have to know about this carefully buried side of him. The thoughts of a tamed and hollowed out future stung and ricocheted in him, but the image also held a kind of relief. 

It seemed vaguely plausible anyway, more than any other future he could see ahead of them. It was a fantasy that allowed for both Morse and Win to move on and live unburdened, even if the lump of metal in his chest did reach out and drag him underground. He wished he could promise them both so many things, and knew that now that more than ever, he couldn’t.

There was a hell of a lot he wasn’t telling Win these days. And now he was keeping it from Morse, too. It occurred to Fred only as he left him. Another inadvertent secret. Fred still did want him to know, to hear what he would say, to feel how Morse would comfort him. Morse had a way of prodding him through the depths until he found a path ahead. Maybe there was nothing he could do or say now, but Fred still wanted… but it had turned out that he’d been no more able to give voice to his metallic fear to Morse than any other time he should have. Not then, at the moment of reunion, of union. 

He realized, too, when given time to think, that he knew that if Morse realized that Fred’s time might be limited, he would send him away, back home. Tell him he had no rightful claim on his time, never mind what Fred himself wanted. That’s how he was, stubborn, somewhere between self sacrifice and sanctimony. He had an idealized vision of both Fred himself and his marriage, even after he’d met Louisa -- and Fred was still uncomfortably aware that he could have done more to unseat himself from Morse’s exaggerations. But Fred had wanted him to have this time. He wanted it for himself and for Morse, hated the idea of his agonized wishing all alone in the shabby little summer house, in his wrongful prison cell, believing himself wrong and alone. They could have this for a little while, Fred thought, and it seemed to him that if he had to choke on regrets at the end of his life, Fred would rather regret that which he’d done instead of that which he had not.

**

The wholesome peace of the cabin had been broken, as though Morse had awoken and discovered that his previous time there had only been a dream, easily pierced and brushed aside. He saw again how shabby the place was the clinging damp, the cold. He found that he was thinking seriously about what he planned to do in the future for the first time since he’d moved out there and what he saw ahead of him was a kind of vague nothing. He’d thought about teaching, it’s what he’d proposed to Monica, and it had only been a few steps shy of a true proposal, he supposed, with a shiver of embarrassment at his aimless opportunism, despite how briefly they’d been seeing each other. Monica had seen it for the lost desperate impulse it had been. The idea of flinging himself into a life of drudgery at a second rate public school no longer felt plausible or appealing, especially on his own, with his incomplete degree standing between him and the better positions. Certainly it would be possible that some lesser country school would take on an ex-police intellectual with three quarters of a degree in the Greats. Or maybe he should swallow his pride and find some sympathetic former tutor who would help him find a way back in to finish his degree, if he could stand the cognitive dissonance of being among all those young, fresh undergraduates again. That felt even more impossible, like a discordant note, but the fact that he was plotting and considering all of the crossroads of his life instead of enforcing blindness to them meant something had shifted. It was hard not to resent Thursday for showing up and upsetting his careful torpor, stirring the quiet in his mind like still matter frothed from a formerly placid lake. Intended or not, Morse wouldn’t sink back into the pleasant static of denial while his head was so full of thoughts of Thursday, and the connection they’d strung, and as much as it was wondrous, it was also distracting, prickling terror. 

He had to get out of his head, and out of the isolation of the woods or he would simply sink himself into a panic of indecision, especially as the weather had closed in. The mist that had rolled in as Thursday departed had been followed by a cold, persistent rain, giving lie to the brief phantom of spring sunshine he’d been enjoying. The rain kept him inside for a day, while he felt the boundaries of himself shifting and his thoughts ranging bright and sharp. He’d had to force himself not to simply lie in bed and relive and scrutinize the linked, now inevitable-seeming turnings he’d made to end up here, and allowed Thursday to make on both of their behalves. He played his records instead, and tidied -- an activity he usually gave low priority save when it was the only option other than manic anticipation and mild panic -- and changed the linens on the bed. He tried to think of all the groceries he might need, and could afford, and could cook with his limited skills and tools. Morse didn’t even attempt to pretend that this wasn’t all planning and preparation for what might make Thursday’s time here in the Summer House comfortable -- welcoming and effortlessly bohemian if he couldn’t offer anything more capable or well furnished -- when he returned. 

If he did. Morse did see that there was a chance, a strong one, though not, he thought, a likely one, that he would have gotten home, seen Mrs. Thursday and realised that he’d made a grave mistake, and would nobly put an end to their affair the next time he saw him. Morse paced and puttered in his small cabin, the rain drumming fretfully on the low, resonant roof. He didn’t like this possibility, it made everything in him ache and flinch, but he knew that he ought to keep reminding himself. Fred Thursday was a married man and an honourable one, or a man who tried to be honourable. That this man wanted him enough to break his vows and forget himself was a miraculous, spirit-limning feeling, but didn’t mean that reality might not remind Thursday of where he belonged, in the known order of things, and where Morse did. 

Morse had never set out to insert himself into the middle of that order. He’d come as far as the borrowed cabin on the lake to prevent himself from becoming immeshed further, from acting rashly or doing more harm. But now that he was there, clinging to Thursday’s attention, he knew that he wasn’t willing to easily cede his place. He knew quickly as he thought with seriousness about the options before him that just as much as he couldn’t imagine walking back through the doors of Cowley Station, he couldn’t bear to pack his bags and wrench himself the rest of the way away and flee for any backwater school that might take him on. 

After a restless couple of days, lingering inside while he vacillated, Morse began to run out of patience, and stocks in his pantry, and then out of milk for his tea. He grasped at the excuse to walk up to the big house and beg a ride, or borrow a car to go into town. Maybe Anthony would take him, and talk to him sensibly, as though nothing had changed, and bring him back down to earth.

He arrived in a damp and dreary state thanks to his lack of umbrella and the open lawn from the woodland path to the manor. The group was in the smaller parlour on the ground floor when Antony showed him in, with a record playing and the girls huddled together around a card table, looking as though they were conspiring over a game of solitaire laid out in the center. But when Tony led him in, one of the women, a tall, slender young person with a twist of coppery hair, Kaye’s friend Julia, called out to him. “Kaye has brought tarot cards, some and join us -- she said she could do just as well as the stall at the fair the other night, or better, even. Come and let us tell your future, Tony. You, too, Morse. Surely yours would be more interesting than all of ours put together.”

“Oh, I seriously doubt that,” Morse demurred. He smiled politely in their direction and tried not to show the distaste he felt at peering at his future even is this pantomime way, or especially so. 

“See, Julia, not everyone cares to know what the cards have in store for them, I am not alone that way,” said Antony, who had obviously been an earlier victim of these entertainments. 

“I suppose that we ought to be glad that phrenology is now thoroughly passed into antiquity or friendly parties of an afternoon would be a damn sight more awkward than even tarot and i ching games,” said a dark haired young man who Morse hadn’t seen before.

“Pagan, I don’t believe you’ve met my friend and neighbor Joss Bixby. He moved into the big place at the other end of the lake, over Christmas, wasn’t it? I remember your first big bash there for the New Year-- the first hour or so of it anyway,” he said with a sheepish smile, “It was quite the night. Bix, Morse and I were up at Lonsdale together. Even roomed together for a year, back when the world was young.”

“Oh, come now, I’m older than you, Tony, so it’s no good talking to me like a thorny old thing,” Bixby said fondly, and strode over to shake Morse’s hand. “It’s a pleasure to meet you. Morse, is it? Or Pagan?”

“Morse,” he said quickly, before Tony could editorialize about the old days, smiling tightly. “The other is an old nickname, for no reason more sinister than that I don’t care to give out my Christian name, but it’s Morse. Just Morse.”

“Oh, yes, I’ve acquired a name or two like that, over the years myself. Stick to your guns then, Morse -- And I shall hope to never hear that you have given it away to any of us,” said Bixby with a laugh, but a friendly one. Morse believed that if he teased, he did so with delighted charm not derision. “Will you be joining us for drinks and entertainments this afternoon?”

“I’m afraid not. I’m grievously out of supplies down at the Summer House, and Tony has kindly offered to drive me into town to stock up, so we’ll be off soon.”

“Really? And leave your guests, Anthony?” asked Bixby in a light voice of faux scolding. Then he turned his dark, curious eyes on Morse directly. “How about this, Morse. Let me drive you in myself, and leave Tony to his house party… I’m supposed to meet someone briefly out that way myself, pick up some papers this afternoon, so I might as well run you. Then we might get a bite to eat, afterwards, if you like. What do you say?”

Morse looked between Toby and Bixby, assessing, then shrugged vaguely. He seemed an interesting character, certainly. He could spend a few hours being distracted by this stranger as well as by Tony and the rest, and Tony did have guests. “If it’s no trouble,” he offered awkwardly, still looking between them.

“If you don’t mind being foisted off, Morse, then by all means, let Bix entertain you for the day. You look as if you could use it. He knows all the best watering holes around here, and I guarantee you won’t be bored,” said Tony, grinning proudly at his taste, apparently, in choosing his friends aptly, or in recruiting another in the game of attempting to draw Morse out of himself. “I suppose I always knew the two of you would hit it off, given the chance,” he added, with a somewhat cryptic look in Bixby’s direction.

“Well, then, that’s all set, isn’t it, Morse?” said Bixby, with another smoothly charming expression of expectancy.

“I suppose so,” said Morse, affably amused at the handoff and by Bixby’s obvious curiosity. He supposed that Tony, Bruce and the girls had spoken to him of their secretive lodger in the woods, to its usual effect. “This is very good of you, Mister Bixby.”

“Oh, call me Bix, they all do. I’ll just retrieve my coat, and we’ll be off,” said Bixby, loping off slightly ahead, but gracefully so in a way that never seemed to hurry, as Tony walked him as far as the drawing room door. 

“Say, did your friend ever get a hold of you? The one who called here a few days ago?” asked Tony, as they were heading out. Morse knew it was an innocent question, had known that Thursday had stopped to get directions to the cabin from Tony, and Tony’s tone was genuinely casual, but Morse still half froze with prickling self awareness. He cleared his throat and consciously carried on. “Oh, yes, he did. He, um, wanted me to give you his thanks for sending him along. 

“Of course,” said Tony politely, with relieving lack of curiosity, “of course. I was just glad to see some of your cohorts beginning to take an interest in you.” Tony gave him a last look of longsuffering fondness and waved him off after Bixby, and turned back to the party at the card table, gracefully surrendering to his fate of having his fortune told. 

**  
Bixby’s car was a new and fast coupe, and his clothes were those of a wealthy man who might not always have been, not the understated and neat tweeds of Tony’s usual set, but a little more sharp, perhaps just the countryside of fashionable, though Morse was too disconnected from the _a la mode_ to ever know who was following or flouting it. Bixby was sharp-eyed and moved with precision and kept glancing at Morse with an intelligence and acuity that made him want to go careful and guarded around him, not yet sure of his new acquaintance. He seemed too knowing by half and Morse felt entirely too raw and obvious to face that. Though it was innocuous and meaningless, he wished that Tony hadn’t mentioned Thursday in front of the others, who might remember and casually ask again. They all knew that he hadn’t had any visitors from his old life, and, being the compulsively social people they were, this had already been occasion for comment, and they would be curious about this first intrusion from Morse’s world. He had no idea what he would say about it, about Thursday, even leaving aside all that couldn’t be mentioned. The shooting, leaving the force, he hadn’t said a word about it since those early evenings with Tony talking about the news of it from the papers, even to Lady Belborough’s soulfully curious pressing, and by now he didn’t think he would. Bixby’s keenness, however, presented something a little more difficult to dodge.

“Tony said that you’re the one living in that… charming little artist’s hideaway in the woods between his property and mine,” said Bixby, not quite a question. 

“I’m not sure ‘charming’ is the word I would use, but yes. He’s offered it to me while I consider, well.” He shrugged tightly to cover the space for the words he didn’t have to describe the situation.

“Are you an artist then? Or a writer?”

“No, no. Whatever gave you that idea?”

“Tony said that the family used to let it out as a kind of artist in residency, all their aspiring poet friends, he said. Hoping for inspiration by Lake Silence. So I suppose I assumed. And, from what Tony has said of you, I thought you’d fit in with some of the artists I’ve met. Not the flash sort who turn up at the right parties, but the ones who might actually have something to say.”

“Well that’s an interesting notion, but perhaps a bit of flattery on Tony’s part. I’ve never had that kind of gift, unfortunately, at least not that I’ve discovered.”

“Hmm. Having met you, I’m not entirely sure that I believe you, but as you say,” said Bixby agreeably. “Though I’m sure you could tell some tales about your detecting days, if you cared to.”

“No, I don’t think I could,” said Morse, with more sharpness than he’d meant, and then smiled ruefully over at Bixby in the driver’s seat. “I’m trying to put that all behind me now, you see,” he explained.

“Ah,” said Bixby, uncomfortably knowing, “Now that I do understand, old man.”

They rode on in silence for a while, the countryside slowly petering out and the developed areas thickening into town. Bixby didn’t turn on the radio; the only accompaniment was the sound of the powerful engine thrumming beneath the bonnet and the metronome of the wipers sweeping away at the steady rain. The heater turned the cabin close and humid, and Morse felt strangely lulled, not towards sleep, exactly, but towards a wordless fugue that saved him from having to think for a time, or from feeling the strain to make small talk -- which Bixby didn’t seem to feel necessary either. 

Bixby spoke up again as they neared the high streets, asking him where he preferred to go for his provisions. Then as they sat parked, Bixby stopped him before he got out. 

“Listen, old man,” he said, not quite looking over at him, and seeming less than poised for the first time since they’d met. “Tony can be rather… clumsy, at times. As I’m sure you know. I hope you weren’t… He does get a bit of a thrill out of setting the odd ducks together and seeing them recognize each other. I hope you didn't think anything of any... assumptions he might have made back there. He is harmless, in an artless sort of way, I’m sure you know.”

Morse got the feeling that this was all aimed at some remark of Anthony’s that had meant something to him but had floated by him as he grappled with other thoughts. He supposed that he was missing a crucial piece of information, to understand what Bixby was asking about, or about what he was trying to reassure him. He couldn’t glean the meaning from Bixby’s meaningfully careful, slightly apologetic look, and realized that Bixby assumed that he knew something that he didn’t, but he didn’t feel in a position to interrogate any of it. “I didn’t assume anything… Nothing to worry about, I’m sure,” said Morse vaguely, and was relieved to see the unknown question in Bixby’s face ease and vanish. “Antony really is one of those fellows who feels he’s accomplished something grand when his different sets of friends get along with each other. I’m one of his harder cases, I suppose. I don’t make it easy for him, I’ve been a steady target for social matchmaking for so long that I’ve begun to freeze at the sight of it.”

“Hmm, yes, I can see that you’re that type. The make my own way through or go it alone type. I’m the same, really. Or I used to be, before the need for business connections overtook my... individualism. Belvedere is supposed to be my place away from all that, though it’s been. Well. Your own life does follow you everywhere, doesn’t it?” said Bixby with a laugh, cryptic again but not in a way that felt exclusionary.

Morse laughed, too, with dry recognition of how true that was. “Yes it does,” he agreed, “Inescapable.”

After they split up to do their own errands, Morse’s rather more necessary and judicious going by the size and labelling on their parcels when finished, he met Bixby back by the sleek blue coupe and they went for a drink. The pub Bixby selected was more upmarket and modern than the cop pubs and old establishments where Thursday used to take him, and it boasted linen tablecloths and a full menu. They sat at a table by the window, one of the nicest in the room. Morse let Bixby order for both of them, as the menu and all its chefly descriptions seemed a faintly overwhelming no mans land after a month or more of soup and sandwiches or omelette allowed for by the tiny cabin kitchen and larder, and whatever Tony or Bruce’s able cooks had provided when he came to dinner, which had required no choice from him. Bixby seemed to take this as a mark of respect for his greater culinary experience rather than anything more socially bewildered, which was a relief. Bixby also ordered them a bottle of crisp, white wine, and though Morse often spurned wine for the tannic wonders of real ale, it was cold and silky and he found himself rapidly unwinding under its charms. 

Bixby managed to coax some of his most interesting case stories out of him, and then some of his most ridiculous Tony and Bruce stories, the antics they got up to, and successfully dragged Morse along. The truth was he’d been far easier to drag, back then, so he had plenty of material. Eventually he turned the questions back around, and found out that Bixby now worked rather vaguely in the growing businesses around grand prix racing, somewhere on a hierarchy of team development, sponsorship seeking and racing management for which Morse had no frame of reference. He had raced through the late fifties and early 60s with Janus Racing Team, now Janus-Bixby Racing Team, which he co-owned after a buy in with family money, and after wining the ‘61 championship, coming in second in ‘62 and ‘63, and finally taking another championship in ‘64, as well as the constructors, he’d been drifting away from grand prix and in the direction of endurance racing and speed trials, both on land and on water. He spoke about the salt flats of Utah, in the States, an alien, baking, glaring place. 

“You can go mad there, Morse,” he said, “I’ve seen it happen, it’s like hypnosis, like a trance or a transformation. The only thing that matters is speed and the machine you’re thrashing into obedience, everything else seems to diminish into the distance, out on that flat white plane. It put some things in perspective, I think, in a backwards fashion. But you can’t live your life and run your business from a desert, so I came back to earth and made some changes. Eventually that led me to Belvedere, and my little red boat. I still love my racing team, of course, and I can’t imagine leaving the circuit behind, but I realized that, well. You must know that we lose one or two of us each year, that the salt flats take their dues, and now Campbell with his Bluebird. It’s not that I begrudge that, not at all. It makes everything else seem so much more important, full of savour. But I saw how little I had to leave behind, and how little there was tying me to my own life. It becomes so easy to take risks, living like that, old man, foolhardy risks. There’s still too much I want to accomplish to let it go that way for me.”

“I don’t understand it, I have to say. To gamble your life so freely, and for what? It isn’t war, or… it’s motor racing,” asked Morse, thoughtlessly blunt and encouraged by the wine and by Bixby’s boldly unvarnished manner, “what is it about that that’s so valuable that it’s worth the risk? You don’t seem, on short acquaintance, like someone hungry enough for glory for it to be that.”

“Don’t I? Well, that’s encouraging, it means there’s hope for me,” Bixby said with a pleased and teasing smile, and then sighed and drained his glass. “It’s hunger for something, I believe. I don’t think I can explain it if you don’t have the taste for speed. But you were a copper, though you don’t like to talk about it. Tony told me you got into some scrapes, no, I’m sorry, that was flippant, some real trouble this winter. Surely there is danger enough in your line of work. You must have made your own equations, and found it to be worth the risk.” 

“I suppose I did, for a while. At the same time, CID work had some concrete results that made it seem like a worthy trade. Or maybe I just didn’t see how the risk would matter to me. But I also didn’t realize who I was serving while taking that risk, and where their values really lay.”

“And now your eyes are open, I assume?” asked Bixby, eyeing him speculatively. “Yes, it is a shock to learn the ways of the world. I thought I’d found my way away from that, starting off on my own, but it isn’t as simple as that, as it turned out. But enough about that -- there’s no way to to talk about it without sounding like a pedant or a braggart. It’s all about what you can live with, I suppose. But I do believe in taking just enough of a gamble to keep life interesting.” Bixby smiled winningly, deprecatingly, and leaned a little closer as if imparting a secret.

Morse got the feeling that some of this answer was somewhat rehearsed, but that Bixby was, on the whole, genuine, at least as far as his stated intent to reexamine his life from his new retreat. And what’s more, he felt that Bixby’s interest and friendly curiosity was genuine as well. If Morse had been a great deal less distracted, he might have felt somewhat uncomfortable with that much focused interest pointed at him so specifically, but as it was he found it a flattering sensation and a fascinating conversation to divert his mind. He didn’t even feel the disparity between them, Bixby in his crisp, champagne colored shirt and perfectly tailored sport coat and well coiffed hair, and he in his department store wool blend pullover and soft trousers that hadn’t seen an iron since the old flat, and general appearance of having walked through the blowing rain and left to dry -- he was aware of this contrast, as he usually was at least slightly, among Bruce and Anthony’s friends, but he got the sense that Bixby himself didn’t notice at all. Perhaps it was his life in racing, he supposed that was likely a sport that required all sorts.

It was the first time since he’d been to a restaurant in a while, since he and Monica had moved on from the phase of dating that required exploratory meals in neutral scenery, probably, if you didn’t count pints out with Strange or the team while talking about work or unwinding after a case. He didn’t think that counted, not like this when he’d been asked and spoken to, not chided or spoken around. And his lunches with Thursday, those were something else again, something he couldn’t categorize, save that there was a comfort in them that was as much a retreat as it was a social outing. There was something so civilized about this interlude and how Bixby treated him, near stranger though he was. It reminded him, or made him aware in a more conscious way, of how strange and scrabbling and eccentric his life had become. Better than false arrest, or the initial feverish recovery from that time, but still not a mode of life he had ever envisioned for himself. 

“So when the charm of vacation from society wears off, what do you see for yourself?” asked Bixby, as if sensing his direction of thought. “I know you don’t intend to return to the noble helmet and whistle brigade, but surely an Oxford man such as yourself has many options open to you.”

“I might try teaching,” he offered, out of habit and the instinct to sound sensible, and thought again how impossible to picture that path seemed to be. “It’s what I pictured, largely, when I set out reading the Greats. Though… having lived so long in circles so different from the classroom and the school hall, I’m not sure that I have it in me any longer.” He thought with a sudden chill, also, of the monstrous conspiracies that such places could breed. Though surely it wasn’t everywhere, that rot and abuse, it couldn’t be, though he might still end up jumping at shadows. “And I suppose, at the time, I expected a fellowship at Lonsdale, rather than a position at some country public school, which seems likely, given my recent path.”

“Yes, that is a qualitative difference, I agree. Different kind of work, and different grubby little beasts provisionally under your care,” Bixby agreed, with humour, “No, I see, I’m not sure it’s you, old man.”

Morse smiled and nodded, conceding what was likely an accurate assessment. Stamford had been a proud old school, but even so, the ring leading boys had been awful to him, to each other, and even to their professors if they had shown any sign the boys could get away with it. Morse didn’t delude himself that the modern youth were in any way more gentle and kind.

“I admit there are drawbacks with that plan,” he said, with a self deprecating smile, and then shrugged honestly, “I suppose there must be other options for me, but just at the moment, it’s difficult to see them… from out in the woods, if you see what I mean.”

“Well, you might come and work with me,” offered Bixby. He said it lightly but with an intent and unreadable look and Morse didn’t know how serious he was. He did get the impression that Bixby was used to being able to buy, wheedle, or boldly stride his way through to anything he wanted.

“Greats and policing haven’t exactly given me a background suited for business or motor racing engineering,” he said equally lightly, “I’m not sure what possible use you’d find for me.”

“Oh, but I already have plenty of people for both of those, experts in their fields, as far as that goes. It’s instinct and conscience I find I value more, these days, far more. And from your stories of these cases you’ve solved, that’s instinct, and instinct. A vision for patterns that even the most learned expert can’t be trained into. You just need to find a way to make it work for you. Trust it, and make it work for you, or let me find a way to make it work for you instead.” Bixby raised his glass in a toast in Morse’s direction, to emphasise the point, and then took a final sip and set it aside. “I know Anthony’s patience is infinite for old friends, but I doubt you’re the sort to be happy stranded out in the wilderness forever… And believe me, you’d have an exciting life as my advisor...?”

“And what, exactly, does an advisor do?” asked Morse, somewhere between curiosity and suspicion. 

“Oh, nothing very strenuous, if you didn’t like, and I certainly won’t insist you join in my daredevil act if you don't fancy it, old man. It’s a matter of being able to see the whole board, as well as the details, do you see? Think about it, at least, will you?” he asked, fixing Morse with an earnest gaze, somehow open despite how little he had revealed.

“Well,” said Morse, still startled, but still, also, curious just the same, “It’s not an offer to take lightly, I’m sure.”

“Good, good. Now come on, I believe we’d better get on the road. It looks like the rain’s eased, and, unless I’ve gotten my timezones wrong again, I’m expecting a call from overseas at 10 tonight, and the truth is I haven’t actually done my homework.”

On the way back out to Lake Silence they were quiet, too, but it was a different quiet from before. Less of hesitancy and more of preoccupation with their mutually unknown concerns. Morse could tell already that there was a great deal more to Bixby under the pleasant and lighthearted surface of him. Morse didn’t think it was anything dangerous, or poisonous, but he could tell that Bixby was not as carefree and artless as he appeared. Neither was he, Morse, he knew, and he appreciated it in others, as well as the not pushing to know all, like Anthony, who was open and emotional. He could sense with Bixby the fraternity of men with secrets and troubled hearts, the look of recognition and the tacit agreement not to ask. 

“You should come see me,” said Bixby as he let Morse off on the little road by the cabin, “Tomorrow maybe? Or the next day? I could give you lunch and a bit of a tour of Belvedere, if that’s not too drearily mundane?”

Morse considered, thinking of Thursday and his unspecified promise to return. Did he dare, leaving the cabin again for another afternoon, when surely Thursday would be back any day. And yet, Morse liked Bixby well enough, and he needed to do something besides sit around and wait, and fail to plan, and slowly lose his mind in a fog of uncertainty. “Alright,” he said, “I could do that. I admit I’m curious to see the place… perhaps, the day after tomorrow? If I can?”

“Of course, the day after tomorrow, then. I’ll expect you. Good night, old man,” said Bixby with a grin, and then slipped back into his sleek blue car and drove off with a roar of engine cylinders in the night. 

The cabin seemed even more shabby and small after his night out in town, but it was also restful, and safe. Morse made himself cocoa on the stove, with some of the milk he’d bought. Such spinsterly un-indulgences were not his habit anymore, but the big room of the summer house was cold and damp since he’d left the fire banked and it had gone out in his absence, and in the path of incipient disappointment or disturbance he craved something sweet. 

This had been the fourth day since Thursday had been to see him. In just another few days, Morse knew that he would be back at work, back behind his desk in that familiar office at Cowley, with Jakes, and Strange, and without him. Despite how earnestly Thursday had promised to come back before then, each day that passed without sight of him seemed to make this feel less and less likely. Days when Thursday was at the home where he belonged, with the wife who had steadily loved him all these years, and in the face of that how could Morse’s stolen claim on him weigh anything at all. And after Thursday was back in the world of CID, how would he have time for Morse, when his rightful family saw so little of him. An honest DCI in an illegal affair, how had he believed such a thing would happen -- it now, with shifted perspective, looked so very unlikely. 

It had begun, though. It had. And it had been glorious, electric, equally ridiculous and tender. Morse did actually still believe that Thursday would be back. He was certain that the affair would continue. They’d already bowed to it, and he knew that he had no ability to give up an indulgence or something longed for once he’d learned it could be his, and lately he’d come to see that Thursday could be the same. He was impatient. He had been given too much time to turn himself in circles and find doubt. He was frustrated, and felt, maybe unfairly, ignored. But deep down, Morse knew that he wasn’t being spurned. 

Bixby’s offer was something interesting, though. Something novel and flattering, though he couldn’t see yet what it actually was. Morse realized belatedly that Bixby had sought him out, that he’d been made curious by some piece of gossip among his friends, most likely, and had wanted to see the strange ex-detective for himself. Whether Bixby’s proffered job was something personal or professional, a casual wine-fueled whim or in earnest, was honest or a trapdoor down into something illicit, Morse couldn’t see. The man was interesting, magnetic in a kind of way but also overly intense, too focused and too distant at once. Morse had learned to be wary of men like that, over the years. 

But he had to do something besides hide in the woods, and besides running back to Cowley and pretending that the harrowing, life changing days since December had never happened. There had to be some avenue out. And besides, he was curious.


End file.
